


bookworm

by suntrastar



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, age gap woooooo, bookstore worker!reader, college student!reader, fem reader - Freeform, haven't written fanfic in a hot minute but its ok, hoohoo bookstore fanfic coming your way, natasha will probably do some boss ass stuff at some point, sloowwwww burnnnnn, slow burn probably, smut at some point, steve is a himbo i adore him, they will kiss at some point, this is a lighthearted fic!, ummm what else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24373975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suntrastar/pseuds/suntrastar
Summary: You work at a bookstore, and come to learn that Captain America has an affinity for trashy romance novels.And maybe an affinity for you, too.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Reader
Comments: 103
Kudos: 303





	1. cat bookmark

His entrance is normal enough.

The bell above the door chimes as he steps him. You greet him as he does the double-take that’s customary for every new customer. The building is unassuming from the outside- brick with a simple sign reading Winnie’s Bookstore, but the inside is another story.

He takes it in. Chandeliers instead of regular lightbulbs, glowing soft yellow. Dark mahogany bookshelves, made of real wood and ornately carved, matching the discount table up front and the counter you stand behind. Posted on the outside of each shelf is a sheet of cream-colored paper with the genre written on it in neat, polite cursive.

When he gets over the shock, he returns your greeting, and promptly disappears into the maze of shelves. Normal behavior, right?

But he’s wearing a hat and sunglasses, _ indoors.  _ And he’s absolutely, positively  _ shredded,  _ muscles evident even in his loose jeans and zip-up hoodie. They flex with each step he takes, and dear God even his  _ steps  _ are unique, wide-legged and confident and purposeful.

And that beard…

It’s achingly, painfully,  _ glaringly _ obvious that he’s Captain America.

_ Captain America is in your bookstore. _

Well, not _ your  _ bookstore, it’s Winnie’s son’s bookstore, but you’ve been here long enough to know it as your own. It’s become a second home to you, and now there’s an Avenger in it.

You’re in awe, should you be in awe? He’s a fucking superhero, of _ course _ you should be in awe. You could tweet about this right now, text all of your friends. This could be your crazy New York moment, like how one of your friends ran into a Broadway star while getting coffee, and it could be a whirlwind encounter. Your heart rate spikes up up up, and then steadily falls back down when you start to wonder.

Do all of the Avengers try so  _ desperately  _ to be inconspicuous, or is it just him?

It’s a little bit sad.

You’ve lost sight of him and don’t try to find him. You move from behind the counter to the shelves, intending to see if any of them are disorganized or have books that are out of place. There’s only a few other customers tonight, just regulars, and they’ll call your name when they’re ready to check out.

There’s a self-help book wedged in one of the science fiction shelves. It’s a little bit annoying, since the self-help section is literally one row behind the science fiction section, but you take it out anyways and go to put it back where it belongs. 

What type of books does Captain America read? Who even knew that he _ read?  _ All of the history books published about him detail his height and his military service and his miraculous return from the ice. Nothing about hobbies, which is the same type of sad as him having to wear a disguise to a bookstore.

You have a few of those history books in stock, and you  _ pray  _ that he doesn’t stumble upon them.

Captain America is in the self-help section.

You try to think of him as a normal customer, devoid of a name, but your mind won’t let you do it. What is his real name, anyway? Something that starts with an S, maybe-

He jolts when he hears your footsteps in the aisle, turning at you with enough speed and ferocity to leave you stunned. The book nearly slips from your hands.

“Sorry,” Captain America says sheepishly. He brings a hand up to his head, maybe to run it through his hair, but then he remembers the hat and settles for adjusting his sunglasses instead. “I didn’t see you there.”

You’ve heard his voice dozens of times before in commercials and press releases and even one time in person when he came to give a brief speech at your university, that was so dull and convoluted that you fell asleep listening to it.

You wouldn’t fall asleep listening to him now. His voice is  _ lovely.  _ Like honey, the kind that comes in those cute plastic bears. Deep and simultaneously light,  _ sweet. _

“It’s okay!” You smile at him awkwardly and find the book’s proper spot, neatly shelving it back where it belongs. “Can I help you find anything?”

He inhales as a distraction while he considers it. “No- or wait, actually, yeah.”

Oh god, you were expecting him to say no! Still, you adjust the neck of your lanyard, and the ghost of his eyes that you can make out behind the sunglasses follow your movements. “What are you looking for?”

Definitely not self-help. Captain America is perfect, _bioengineered_ to be perfect.

“Um, just something kind of lighthearted. Easy reading?”

He says the words like he’s never actually said them before, like he’s only heard people say it and he’s trying it out for himself for the first time.

You don’t question it. “Sure. If you want easy reading, I would consider romance. I can take you to that section and recommend some books that you may like-?”

You leave it open-ended, maybe more for yourself than for him. The thought of trying to recommend cheesy romance novels to a literal superhero is  _ nerve-wracking. _ What if you accidentally embarrass yourself, somehow expose yourself as a voracious reader of all things trashy, including poorly-written romance that falls into his category of lighthearted, easy reading?

_ Please _ say no thanks.

“I would like that.” He gives you a flighty smile, which quickly flickers back out. There’s a slight crease between his eyebrows that the glasses don’t hide. “If you don’t mind.”

It’s your job, so you definitely don’t mind bringing him to the romance section of the store, a huge expanse of shelves taking up nearly as much space as two genres combined. Winnie  _ loved  _ her romance novels.

The store is quiet and Captain America’s footsteps are thundering in your ears, or maybe that’s just your own heartbeat. 

You pick up two novels, both recent releases, climbing high on all the bestseller lists, and turn back to face him. One has a pale blue cover with a lit candle puffing smoke in the shape of a heart, and the other is a stock-photo sunset with the silhouettes of two people almost-kissing plastered over it.

“This one is about, uh,” you hold up the blue one and try to remember what it was about, “these people that have been dating on-and-off since high school. But they keep on getting back together, and keep on sparking an old flame, or something.”

Captain America smiles again. “And the other one?”

You hold it out. “Okay, I  _ love  _ this one. These two people both go on this cruise, but it turns out that it’s a couples’ cruise. So since they’re the only single people on the whole ship, they keep on getting paired up in all of the activities, and then they just, you know, fall in love.”

He takes both books from you, and holy cow his hands are  _ huge _ , and studies them. He even turns them over to read the blurbs on the back.

You get the urge to say something. “They both have happy endings, by the way.”

Captain America looks up from the books. Despite yourself, you continue.

“And, um, if I’m being honest? They’re pretty trashy. They dedicate  _ pages  _ to describing each kiss, and in the cruise one the author uses the same metaphor _ five times. _ But they’re great to read, and they’re a lot of fun, and they don’t take anything too seriously. So I recommend them.”

The smile on Captain America’s face doesn’t leave. Could you put that on a resume, that you made a superhero smile?   
He waits patiently for you to realize that you’re rambling, and then waits for you to stop rambling. “That’s exactly what I was looking for,” he says in his lovely honey voice. “I’ll take both of them.” 

You come to your senses, just a little bit.

_ “ _ Great! I can find some more that you would like, or you can keep on browsing, if you want.”

“I’ll just take these two for now.”

_ For now. _

If Captain America ever decides to step foot in your bookstore again, you hope it’s during your shift.

***

You’re young.

Steve notices this with an acute weariness, suddenly feeling all of those seventy-something years spent in the ice pile onto his bones.

You can’t be much older than Peter. As you scan the barcodes on the backs of the books you recommended and package them, he watches your hands. They move deftly and look smooth, not calloused or scarred or bruised like Peter’s have inevitably become. Your fingernails are painted hot pink. Steve hasn’t realized until now that he has a strange affinity for hot pink.

For a second, your eyes flicker up to him, and he immediately shifts to staring at the little bookmark display on the counter. Only later does he remember the sunglasses. 

“The bottom row is all free,” you say, gesturing to the display.

He focuses on the bottom row on bookmarks as you take his money and open up the cash register. They’re made of cheap cardstock, unlike the smooth plastic of the ones that actually cost something, and have all types of nonsensical designs on them. Smiling pandas, a stripy orange cat wearing a cowboy hat, a worm sitting on a stack of books, a cartoon giraffe with a t-shirt that reads I LOVE BOOKS.

“I really like the cat one,” you add, and hold out his change. Steve takes it from you and also the bag you put his books in. 

He takes the cat bookmark. 

You smile, and you probably give the same smile out to every customer, but it feels good to receive it anyway. “Have a good night!”

“You too,” he says, and tucks the bookmark into the bag and the change into his pocket.

Before he leaves, he memorizes the name on the tag of your lanyard. If this whole reading thing works out, if it does provide a respite from the rest of his life the way the team therapist said it would, if the books you called “trashy” are able to help him even a little bit, he’ll come back to this shop. During your shift, if he can make it.

It’s nice to be helped by someone who doesn’t recognize him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello lovely people! thanks for reading my fic :) i'm trying to keep the chapters short in this so i'll be updating more frequently!!!!  
> this is going to be a very soft and gentle fic because i can't take myself seriously haha expect lots of nervous!steve. i don't know what else to say. feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think!


	2. bad book (like, very bad)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you see steve some more

A week passes before Captain America shows up again.

In that week, you manage to do a lot of things.

You write an essay for one of your classes. You find a new Netflix show to binge, and fall asleep halfway through episode two. You dip cotton balls in nail polish remover and wipe the pink off your nails, and then repaint them mint green. You restock shelves at work.

You google Captain America and learn that his real name is Steve and that his eye color is blue and that he hosted a support group for the entire five-year duration of the Blip, learn that he does nice things for people even when the world isn’t at stake.

You almost tell your friends about it, that you met _Captain America,_ and then catch sight of one of them reading a story about the Avengers in your college newspaper, and then promptly decide against it. It can be your own little juicy, patriotic secret.

Most importantly, you reread the two books that you gave Captain America, _Steve,_ and find out that they’re not just trashy, but straight up _awful._ They’re garbage, the same category of garbage that things like salt and vinegar chips and Gossip Girl reruns fall into.

The books are _horrible._ But also insanely addictive. You read them so diligently that you could probably quote paragraphs of the stories in your sleep. And then, if that isn’t enough, you start to get a little bit… weird.

Six days pass. Six days where you constantly think about the encounter, where you think about Ca- _Steve._ Where you wondering what he thought about the books, where you imagine so many different conversation starters fueled by a funny joke about the books, or maybe your favorite scene, or maybe-

You’ve convinced yourself that you’ve lost your fucking marbles.

But can anyone really blame you? This is the most interesting thing that’s happened in your life in months. 

On day seven, you’re handing a customer their receipt when the bell above the door chimes.

You look past the customer’s face too fast and nearly get whiplash.

Steve Rogers is in the fucking building!

He’s wearing the same sunglasses as last time with a different hat. It doesn’t look too out of place though, since the sun is out and streaming in through the windows, catching on the glass of the chandeliers and refracting little shapes of light, giving his skin a soft sheen, painting strands of his beard golden in the prettiest way you’ve ever seen.

The customer takes their receipt and walks away with their books. Even though it’s busy today and there’s people in every aisle, people combing through the discount table, people texting on their phones, you can only focus on him.

“Hi!” you say loudly, too loudly. A few heads turn, but it doesn’t bother you until you see Steve wince, and then you promise yourself that you’re going to talk quietly with whatever you say next.

He walks up to you until he’s near the counter, across from you like you’re about to ring his stuff up. After looking at so many pictures you can halfway imagine the features that he’s hidden away. Blue eyes and longish hair- a combination that would _definitely_ make your heart dropkick you in the chest if you could actually see it. Thank God for the disguise.

“How were the books?” You ask, _quietly,_ hoping that reading something so shitty hasn’t transformed him into some literary elitist who only appreciates classic Western literature and books written before 1950.

Steve exhales as he thinks of his response. You just know that he’s thinking of some euphemism to give you, to spare your feelings.

“They were pretty bad.” He turns his head away from you, like he’s expecting you to be offended. “But I couldn’t put them down.”

Yes! Captain America is not a book snob! You could hug him right then and there, literally _throw_ your arms around his shredded torso, tell him that you appreciate him _so much,_ and recite the Pledge of Allegiance for him, salute him and thank him for his service.

A customer comes up with a small mountain of books in their arms. Steve apologizes for standing in their way, and you have to delay your response while you ring it all up, ask if they want their receipt in the bag and exchange other pleasantries. 

Steve stands to the side of the counter, at a considerable distance, and watches you, or maybe just your hands. He did that last time, too.

When all of the books are finally bagged and the customer leaves, he comes to stand across from you again in front of the counter. You’re close enough to see the reflection of yourself and the wall behind you in the lenses of his sunglasses.

“I told you that they weren’t that great,” you say, “but they are seriously addictive. What did you think of the part when they finally get together for good at the high school reunion?”

Steve smiles. “That was my favorite part.”

“Mine too.”

When you practiced that line in your head, it led to a robust conversation, while still maintaining your professionalism, but now a silence just takes over. You just look at Steve and he looks at the spot above your head. There’s soft music playing, the rustling of pages and the echoes of footsteps, a mom reprimanding her kid for touching the displays in the childrens’ section.

“Do you have any more recommendations?” Steve eventually asks.

You put your elbows on the counter and lean forward, cupping the side of your face with one self-manicured hand. “No, sir. I work at a bookstore, but those were the only two books I’ve ever read.”

He doesn’t realize you’re not serious until you smile.

“Oh! Yeah, my bad. That was a dumb question.”

Captain America is _blushing_ in your bookstore, and you’re the one that caused it. 

Is it because you called him sir, because you teased him, or because leaning forward has put you close enough to him that you can make out the stitching on the collar of his coat? Maybe all three.

The starstruck feeling you’ve been carrying around his persona has somewhat faded away. This new Captain America you’re seeing, who’s kind of awkward and not suave at all and apparently likes reading romance novels is way better than the polished heroes they show on TV.

You try to laugh it off. “I was kidding. Anyways, have you ever heard of Sarah Dessen?”

***

On your way home from work, you stop at a little tourist trap of a shop and head straight to the section that sells Avengers merchandise.

You buy a cheap, rubbery phone case with the design of one specific red, white, and blue shield on it.

***

The third time Steve visits the store, wearing yet _another_ hat, you lead him straight to the romance section. Captain America likes cheesy romance novels. The sky is blue and the earth is round. It’s all accepted as fact.

You talk your way through a description of a book you read last week, Steve listening to you intently. It’s nice that he actually pays attention to what you have to say, all ears. It gets hard to believe that he’s the same guy who gives all those elaborate speeches to audiences, the one whose quotes get put on inspirational posters and coffee mugs. 

You’re nearly through with your description, and are halfheartedly thinking about introducing him to the world of Twilight, when someone else darts into the aisle.

The words dry up in your throat as you watch a young girl find her way to the very end of the aisle. Steve turns to watch her, too, sparing you an amused glance as you feel yourself sinking into a detached panic about where she’s heading.

This girl looks like she’s fourteen. And you have this dull sense of horrification, as she tentatively pulls a novel off the shelf and tucks it close to her chest, a futile attempt to hide the title.

You would know that book from a mile away. The end of the aisle is where you keep a very… specific type of books, after all.

She’s trying to sneak out of the aisle unnoticed. Steve’s gaze is burning into her back and yours is too, probably for different reasons. You haven’t even _thought_ about taking Steve back there. There’s no way that he knows what books are back there. 

You let out a tense sigh, and the girl immediately whips around, caught red-handed.

(Could you say caught grey-handed?)

Technically, you can’t stop her from buying anything, but you give her a disapproving glare anyway. 

Steve turns back to face you. It occurs to you that he’s never seen you as anything but nice, a friendly paid-by-the-hour bookstore worker who doesn’t know who he is. Are you bothered that he’s seeing this side of you?

Not really, you decide, because he’s just a customer, right? An extremely hot customer, you remember, as the girl gawks at Steve for what feels like a whole minute, and you can’t even blame her, not until Steve grows uncomfortable and shifts his weight, crossing his arms in front of his chest. The movement shakes the girl out of whatever daze she’s in, and she turns and leaves the aisle.

“What was that?” Steve sounds half-interested, half-confused.

The crease between his eyebrows is back. You clear your throat and try to find the most proper way to explain.

“That girl looks really young, and, uh, the books down there aren’t very… age appropriate.”

The book you’ve been holding and were describing is rendered useless as Steve goes down the end of the aisle. Begrudgingly, you follow, trying to still your nerves.

“Why aren’t they age appropriate?” Steve delicately runs a finger along the spines of the books, his eyes skimming the title. You can’t help but wince when he gets to _the one._

He pulls the book out and studies it. It’s completely misleading- the title and cover of the book are pretty ambiguous, the latter just being a grey patterned tie with a black background.

Steve turns it over to read the description on the back. “This isn’t even that bad. F-”

“It has some really adult themes!”

He’s not impressed with your interruption. If anything, it makes him become even more keen on it. “Kid,” he says, surprising you and even _himself_ with the nickname, his eyebrows rising comically high on his forehead, giving you an amazed smile, “I’m an adult.”

You blanch. _I know you’re an adult, Captain America,_ you want to say, _you’re a whole geriatric. A senior citizen. You’re a borderline centenarian, Captain._

If he wasn’t frozen in that eyes, he would be swaddled in blankets and halfway blind and sitting somewhere in a nursing home, if he would still be here at all. It’s difficult to remember his age, when he’s tall and muscular and has a face that looks like _that._ But now, for whatever reason, you’re feeling his age acutely.

Or maybe you’re feeling yours. Why are you being so _immature_ about this? You’re an adult, too. Sure, you’re financially irresponsible and sometimes your bank balance dips to the single digits, and none of your furniture at home matches, but _you’re an adult,_ and you need to calm the hell down. You’ve done it before, with overeager women in spandex leggings, with older women trying to cover their blush with their hands, with the occasional shameless man, and all of that has gone fine. Why are you being so… stingy about it now, with Steve?

You need to stop. Respect your elders, right? The least you can do for this senior citizen, this fucking _superhero_ , is encourage him to read whatever he wants.

(But, like, does he know what adult means in this context?)

You smile at him. “Of course. You know what, I really think you should take that book this week. I _recommend_ it.” You set the one in your hands back on the shelf.

Steve looks down at the book in his hands, then back up at you. He’s really tall, you think absently, so tall that he could reach the top shelf without standing on a stepstool. He'll have to reach that shelf, he likes the book and wants to read the two _(two)_ sequels.

“I’ll take it.”

You have to force yourself to keep the smile plastered on. Hopefully when he comes in next time, it won’t be during your shift. “Great! I’m sure you’ll love it.”

You ring him up, take extra time to package the book, counting up his change like you learned how to count only yesterday. Steve takes the time to consider all of the bottom-row bookmarks. 

On your googling spree, you found a Buzzfeed quiz titled, _Which Captain America Scandal Are You?_ And obviously, you took it. 

Your result was the scandal where he became a _wanted war criminal._

But honestly, the only truly criminal thing you’ve ever done is sell Captain America a new, pristine copy of _Fifty Shades of Grey._

***

He wouldn’t have ever expected it, but Steve enjoys reading.

He likes the way the pages feel in his hands, and he likes to look at the book covers, all yellows and pinks and bright blues, colors that he doesn’t see a lot of in his normal life. And obviously, he likes the stories.

They’re cheesy and overdone and poorly written, but somehow, despite it all, he likes them. There’s no superhero in these books, and nobody ever puts their life on the line, and the ending is always happy. Maybe that’s why he likes them. Or maybe it’s because the people in the books have no real motivations or aspirations, all they do is live and think and breathe for one thing- love.

It’s refreshing.

And then there’s the act of going out and buying the books themselves.

It’s an open vulnerability in a place he’s never had it before. In that bookstore, so unassuming from the outside and so grand on the inside, with its towering shelves and fancy woodwork, he can pretend to be a nobody, and he gets away with it.

You’re always there, since he makes sure to go whenever you’re there, and you’re happy and friendly and don’t give the most flowery book descriptions, but he likes listening to you describe them anyway. He likes listening to you. 

He likes how when he came in for only the third time, you didn’t even question it. You knew what type of books he was looking for.

Being given such attention, even if it’s your job, while he gets to bask in the anonymity the hat and sunglasses provide, is an _incredible_ feeling.

Although, on that third visit, he saw you become frustrated with someone for the first time. And it was reserved and professional, but he found it intriguing anyway. Why, he doesn’t know.

The newest book he bought sits on his nightstand, removed from its plastic bag. It doesn’t look as fun as the ones he previously bought, which are scattered throughout his belongings. One in his gym bag, one in the common room he shares with his teammates. One that somehow made its way into Sam’s grasp, who returned it with a mean smirk, but didn’t say anything about it.

Romance must be a popular genre.

Steve picks up the novel, settles back on his bed, and opens to page one. He’s done his work for the day. Worked out, trained people, did paperwork and got his picture taken for another promotional article in some newspaper. Now he can turn his brain off, take a break and tell the world whirring in his mind to _shut the fuck up._

Yes, he actually does swear!

The writing isn’t terrible. He recalls your face when he picked it up, so thoroughly scandalized, like it was something dangerous. 

It’s certainly suggestive. Adult, he guesses.

He knows you don’t know who he is. In your eyes, he’s just the weirdo who wears sunglasses indoors. It’s funny that you would assume that he can’t handle _adult_ books, when you yourself are probably fresh out of your teens, just swimming in youthful naivety-

_Oh._

Is this what people call sensory overload?

Overload, but it’s all just his eyes. His eyes are- just- on _fire,_ and he knows his cheeks are _flaming_ red, and while feeling sick he continues to just the end of the page, to finish what he started, and then slams the book shut and throws it on his nightstand, so forcefully that it just falls off and probably damages the spine, which he doesn’t even feel upset about, because-

***

“You gave me a _sex_ book!”

Right when you were on your way out, prepared for a fantastic evening of sitting home and studying, one very flustered Captain America barged inside, nearly barrelled right into you. He looked straight at the counter, for you, and then looked back down after realizing his proximity to you, and then backed up a whole super-soldier-sized step.

And then he started whisper-yelling at you.

It’s impossible to contain your startled laughter. You can’t quiet down, and Steve just turns pinker and pinker as he watches you, and then the laughter spills out of you even harder.

Steve doesn’t just look upset, he looks _appalled._ Eyebrows risen high above his sunglasses, no trace of an easy smile in sight.

“What did you think,” you say, drawing in a deep breath to calm yourself down, “what did you think I meant by _adult?”_

  
“I-” He’s embarrassed, which would be kind of adorable, and endearing if you could see his whole face. But maybe you’re better off with it on, because without the disguise as a grounding reminder, you would probably slip up and call him by his real name. “I thought it meant suggestive! Not- not, uh, actual written _sex-”_

His eyes don’t drop down to the nametag on your lanyard, because you’re not wearing your lanyard. You just got off work.

Steve manages to complete his sentence by huffing out your name anyway. 

Captain America knows your _name._ Did you say that you were over the whole starstruck thing? Because maybe you aren’t. And the thought of _Steve_ reading smutty fanfiction dressed up as a book, him actually reading something so explicit, makes your heart race.

Another laugh bubbles out of your chest. No longer startled, just nervous. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” he sputters.

“That’s on you, buddy. _You’re_ the one that picked that shit up.”

You’re off the clock, so you can drop the formalities. Let your voice stay gritty, not call him sir, swear to your heart’s content. Even if your cursing makes him wince in a performative type of way, the way little kids pretend to be apologetic when you catch them doing something they shouldn’t.

Steve is _performatively_ uptight. That’s exciting to you, in a way, because now there’s the mystery of just how crude he really can be, how, what would describe it as, how _unfiltered,_ and also a little bit sad.

Someone behind you clears their throat. It’s nobody, just a customer perusing the discount table without picking anything up, and sort of _eavesdropping_ on you and Steve, smiling in amusement. 

Maybe you should keep your professionalism up.

“Um, Ste- _sir,_ I’m actually not working right now,” you tell him, straightening your shoulders. “But if you want someone to help you out, my manager is here, and he can help you.”

The way Steve’s mouth twists at your suggestion gives you _such_ a thrill of pride, a reckless sense of bravery that you can’t even consider backfiring.

“Or you could, like, walk with me, if you wanted.”

He takes you in, a hint of a smile on his face. You feel exposed, completely uncovered, as he takes in your worn sweatshirt and the backpack slung over your shoulder, the little strip of neck that’s now showing with your lanyard off, your phone in your hand. The very same phone covered in its kitschy little Captain America-themed case.

“Sure,” he says, _smirking._ This fucker is seriously _smirking._

You brush against him as you head to the door. Steve does the same, and his side brushes against yours, and then he opens the door for you by putting his arm over your head. You have to duck under his shoulder to leave, which makes both you and him weirdly happy.

There’s a biting chill in the evening air, the sky greyish-blue, turning to night with a sunset obscured by rain clouds. You tuck your phone into your back pocket and pull the sleeves of your sweatshirt over your hands as makeshift gloves. Steve stands beside you, waiting for you to lead the way.

Not too many people are outside, but definitely enough that Steve still needs his disguise. You wonder, as you take off, weaving through the sidewalks, if you’ll ever see his whole face in person.

“So,” Steve starts, after you’ve rounded the counter and the bookstore is out of sight. “You’re a fan of Captain America?”

“Not really,” You say, and _revel_ in the shock that takes over his face.

His footsteps falter, just for a second, but his strides are abnormally long, so he catches up to you with ease. “But you have his shield on your phone case.”

You stop underneath the green awning of a little bakery. It’s closed, darkened windows showing your reflection and a view inside to chairs stacked upside down on the tables. 

Steve stops too, looking down at you. You pull your phone out of your pocket and show it to him, case side up. It’s already starting to wear out, the white star and rings of the shield slightly yellowed, gummy little strips of rubber peeling off the sides. 

“I just like the colors,” you say. Even though you really don’t.

It’s stupid, but saying yes feels too personal.

“Oh. Uh, what- what else do you like?”

The question catches you off guard for a second, stunning you, until you realize that Steve is just trying to keep up the conversation and doesn’t know what else to say. It’s awkwardly sweet.

“Let me think.” You start walking again. The muscles in Steve’s arms ripple through the fabric of his shirt as he puts his hands in his pockets. “I like books, obviously. And I really like watching TV, which is the most boring hobby ever, but I’m a simple person! There’s this show I’m watching, where…”

You give Steve a whole synopsis of your hobbies, and somehow, despite the fact that you’re boring as fuck, he latches onto every word. The more you talk, the more you fall.

Could you be… you know… feeling like _that?_ For Captain America?

For Steve?

There’s a lot of nice things about him. The way he laughs at all the jokes you try to make, sometimes genuinely and sometimes out of obligation, his eyes probably crinkling at the corners. And the way he clears the path for anybody walking in the opposite direction, saying “Excuse me,” so politely, completely foreign for the average New Yorker. And the way he keeps on asking you questions about whatever you’re saying, specific and pointed, letting you know that he really is listening.

It does make the conversation extremely one-sided, though. You tried to ask what he does for a living, a customary question for someone you’re trying to get to know, and he mumbled an answer so incoherent that you didn’t press further. It would be creepy with anyone else, but you know what’s up. And it means that you get more time to talk about yourself, even if it makes you feel a little bit guilty.

But he hasn’t ditched you yet!

_Yet._

Somehow, you’ve gotten to the topic of how you prefer cats to dogs, even though you still love dogs, and you’ve slid into this elated haze that makes words spill from your mouth without abandon. Until a phone chimes.

You both pull your phones out, and Steve does a little smile when he sees your case again, and then he sees that the notification is his. 

He stops in the middle of the sidewalk to read something on the screen, a grimace replacing the smile. He gets even tenser as he starts typing, using only his pointer finger, like a middle-aged mom. You would laugh, if he wasn’t suddenly squaring out his shoulders and taking in a tense breath, and completely ignoring the person who bumps into him and cusses out loud when Steve doesn’t even move.

You glare at the person and they move along, and then it’s just you and Steve and his grimace.

“Are you okay?” You ask, tentatively. It could be one of his Avenger friends texting him, one of the higher-ups for whatever authority he reports to (America?), a girlfriend.

Steve slips the phone back into his pocket. “Listen,” he says, with enough authority to make you nervous.

You nearly say something cringey, like _I’m all ears._ Thankfully, he starts before letting you go and embarrass yourself.

“This was-” you look him in right in the eye, or really just the lens, and he stutters, “-was, uh… good. I have to go.”

Just like that, he whirls around, and starts _sprinting,_ which is equally funny and alarming. Captain America sprinting somewhere isn’t a good thing, not in any scenario you can think of.

Dismay sinks in as you come to two very acute realizations. One, you talked more to him than you have with anyone else in months, even your friends that you’ve known for years. Two, he just _left._ Without saying goodbye. While leaving you in the middle of a street in New York City on the verge of nightfall, and sure, your apartment is only a few blocks away, but he doesn’t know that, does he? It’s dangerous.

(And there’s maybe a third realization, too. As you watch his retreating figure, growing smaller and smaller with each stride, you notice that he has a _killer_ ass.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i told myself that i was going to write short chapters for this fic and then this ended up being over 4k words... its ok tho bc i really enjoyed writing it. hope u guys liked reading!   
> why do i write steve so awkward and nervous kfjldskjfkldsjf oh well. whenever cool!steve comes out it's gonna be a.... moment. also i think i wrote a line about him being super tall and then i googled it and chris evans is only 6ft tall.... which isn't even that tall but shhhh it's artistic license or some shit lol. feel free to comment and let me know what you thought of this chapter!!


	3. a month

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he doesn't come back, not for a while

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy this was tedious to write so it will probably be tedious to read i'm sorry

You’re worried.

For the entire duration of three minutes.

And then you walk home by yourself, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner, and eat it in bed while studying, leaving sticky grape fingerprints on your notes until you fall asleep.

Not the healthiest evening, but definitely one appropriate for how the rest of your day has gone.

Steve  _ ditched  _ you. While you were in the process of forming an almost _ -friendship  _ with him. And you can’t even be that upset about it.

You’re not friends with Steve. Hence the  _ almost.  _ You don’t have the  _ authority  _ to be worried about him for longer than three minutes, you don’t have the  _ status. _ Captain America can do whatever the fuck he wants, and you have no say in it and you’ll stay complacent, even it’s something extremely rude, like ditching. Because you’re not his friend, not his anything-

Well, that’s not true.

You’re his cashier. And since you work in retail, the customer is always right, and Captain America is your customer, and will only ever exist as your customer, even if he’s really hot and you thought he liked you maybe just a  _ little  _ bit, but  _ he is always right. _

Even with ditching.

You’re going to move on. If he comes back, great! And if he doesn’t, that’s great, too.

If only there was actually something there to actually move on from...

A week passes.

You go to your classes and to work and back home again, like clockwork. You still stay expectant and overeager whenever the door chimes, but you pretend to not be disappointed whenever the door opens and it’s not Ste- Captain America.

Romance novels have lost their fun, a little bit, so you switch to mysteries. But mysteries are tedious, and even when the murder is solved, it makes you kind of sad, because there was still a murder. So you switch to fantasy, and every time anything ever happens, you find yourself thinking, _ that wouldn’t actually happen,  _ which is the whole point of fantasy! So you switch to memoirs, which are nice, and actually happened, but it feels weird to read a book that someone wrote about  _ themselves,  _ and published it with the expectation that people actually care.

(You’re pretty sure Tony Stark has a memoir or two out there. You should check those out.)

Two weeks.

It’s barely a thought in your mind! You start reading the news, poring over articles about politics and trade and global affairs, because you find those things to be extremely interesting and not boring at all. 

And sometimes, sometimes your thumb brushes over the Avengers column and you glance over at it, barely skim over the article title, and only read the first few sentences. That’s it, really. Every word that starts with a C makes you jolt, and every time you see it, the skimming becomes redundant and you end up reading the whole thing anyway.

No news about your American hero.

Three weeks.

You need to get a new phone case.

***

“Something happened to you at your bookstore.”

Steve nearly loses hold of his book. He does an awkward, undignified fumble to keep it from falling, and when it’s safely back in his grasp and turned to the right page, he looks up with alarm.

Bucky’s grinning. “Natasha was right.”

Nat is currently upfront, piloting the quinjet to the secret location somewhere in Europe, which is the destination for this emergency mission. She’s probably smirking, too.

“How do you know about that?” Steve asks, fighting himself to not tell his friend that it isn’t his bookstore, it’s _ yours,  _ and it’s not technically yours either, but that’s how he thinks of it in his head.

Bucky scoffs and takes a sweat across from him. “Everyone knows.”

“How… How do you know that something happened?”

This is so stupidly juvenile and not even a real concern. 

There’s no lives at stake, no big bad monster that he has to fight with his shield and with his team, no need for him to don his suit and say “Avengers, assemble,” like he’s in a fucking movie or something, and still, he feels so fucking bad about it.

He was fine in his hat and sunglasses and anonymity, pretending to be someone he’s not. It was easy around you, when you were just the person who worked there, and he liked it a lot. He liked it too much, which is why he said yes when you asked if he wanted to walk with you-

That’s not right. It’s not why he said yes.

Steve has looked in the eyes of fascists, aliens, his past self, his own brainwashed best friend, and it’s all been panic-inducing, but driven. He knows what he has to do. Fight them, return this, restore that, win and come up on top and make sure his hair looks good enough for the news interviews.

But when he looked at you, when you asked him that, he was  _ terrified. _ And he didn’t know what to do next, because he’s never done something like that in a context where he isn’t Captain America. It was unfamiliar and scary and had the potential to be  _ horrible,  _ and he could say no if he wanted, which was so  _ exciting,  _ so he said yes.

And it did turn out horrible, because he fucking  _ ditched  _ you.

“You’ve been weird ever since we took off.”

Bucky’s voice snaps him out of his daze. Steve puts his bookmark on the page and closes the book. “Have I?”

“What happened?”

Steve runs a hand through his hair. “I met someone.”

Wait, that wasn’t right, it wasn’t like that-

“You’re getting back in the game?” Bucky is incredulous, and elated.

Steve trips over his own tongue to correct himself. “Not- not like that, she’s just a, um, a  _ cashier,  _ and it’s not like that at all-”

“You’ve been going to this bookstore and reading all these books to get with the girl who works there?”

“No!” Steve says, his voice too loud. Bucky freezes. “No,” he says, more quietly, “It’s not like that, I’m not trying to get with anyone, I- I didn’t ever even  _ think  _ of her like that.”

He realizes he really didn’t.

Steve tries to explain the situation to Bucky, treading as lightly as possible. Bucky’s been getting better, but that doesn’t mean he’s better yet. He laughs at dirty jokes told during televised comedy specials, and his face always lights up whenever he opens a fridge and finds it fully stocked, and a bunch of other little victories. Steve knows that he can’t unload on his friend the way he used to. It would be too much.

So he omits little things. The part with the god-awful sex book, the way he turns dumb and awkward when he talks to you, the way he likes watching the light reflect on your nail polish whenever you reach to grab a book, or when you’re handing him his change. They’re small details, but they flesh out the situation in a way that Steve doesn’t want it to be.

When he’s finished, Natasha replies before Bucky has a chance. 

“Just go back when we’re done with this and tell her who you are. She’ll understand.” She switches the quinjet to autopilot mode and makes her way over to where they’re sitting.

She sits next to Bucky, so close that their arms brush against each other and Bucky doesn’t even _ react.  _ Steve stares at them, incredulous, and then watches the two of them shift, and their hands brush against each other-

_ Oh. _

Good for them!

“I’m going to scare her off if I do that.” Steve bites back his smile. Black Widow and the Winter Soldier. 

“Find a new bookstore and get with a cashier there,” Bucky advises.

“It’s really not like that, Buck,” Steve says, trying to stop himself from blushing. 

Bucky shrugs. “Okay.”

“I’m serious! She’s just-” Steve searches for the words,  _ how  _ does he explain this without getting too heavy or depressing, “-she’s _ young. _ She’s a college student! I can’t, uh, like her.. That’s wrong.”

The two of them just stare at him, unimpressed. Steve wonders why he didn’t pick something else, like an annoying character trait or maybe even something about your appearance. It would make for more convincing reasoning.

(But it would be so  _ rude. _ Just like how lying to you about his identity is, just like how leaving you alone in the middle of the street without giving any explanation is.)

“When we get back, tell her who you are,” Nat repeats. “And then apologize, and you can go if she doesn’t react how you want her to. And even if it’s not what you wanted, you’ll have told her the truth.”

Bucky nods. “Or you could keep up with your lie, and tell her it was just a work emergency.” 

Steve considers it.

This whole thing is petty- a silly, mundane dilemma that shouldn’t be as consuming as it is. It’s childish. He should just brush it off and never return. Things would be easier that way, tied off in a neat, abrupt knot.

But who would recommend books to him? Reading is a therapist-sanctioned activity.

He had his fun with being treated normally. It was fun, but too daunting, too  _ selfish  _ of a demand to ask for.

“I’ll tell her,” Steve says, and ignores the dread curling up in the pit of his stomach. 

***

A month after getting ditched, things are, thankfully, unfortunately, running very much the same.

You go to classes. Apply for a paid  _ (paid!)  _ internship at a big accounting firm, and actually manage to score an interview. Go to work, stock shelves and put receipts in bags, chat with your slew of regulars, who are all very much not Captain America.

Most of them are senior citizens, who actually look the part, and have specific tastes that you’ve learned to cater to. They’re overly sweet and ask questions that sound condescending but are really just dated, asking about your career aspirations and your dating prospects in the same breath, laughing when you stutter out an answer about either one.

You wouldn’t dare invite them out for a walk.

You’ll stick to just offering smiles and recommendations.

The flightish, jumpy teenage boy you’re helping out is definitely  _ not  _ a regular, but there is a hint of familiarity with him that you can’t place. He walked in overly nervous, did the double take and approached you right away, asking in the most awkward voice if you could help him find a book that he could give as a gift to his girlfriend.

Apparently she’s into horror. The more niche and macabre, the better. 

You held back a laugh, and steered him to the horror section.

Now, as you’re about to ring him up, you get a closer look at him.

He has brown hair and a baby face, and he is  _ fidgety.  _ He keeps on alternating with where he puts his hands, from holding them together, to letting them rest at his sides, to shoving them into the pockets of his unzipped hoodie. He wears a faded blue t-shirt underneath the hoodie, with  _ Stark Industries  _ printed across the chest in blocky white font.

“Stark Industries?” You say, swiping the barcode on the dust jacket underneath the scanner. The scanner beeps and the boy fumbles, patting all his pockets in search of his wallet.

“What?”

You gesture at his shirt.

“Oh! Yeah. I’m- I have an internship there. The Stark Internship.”

“Seriously?” 

This  _ kid  _ is interning for  _ Tony Stark?  _ For  _ Iron Man? _ He can’t be older than sixteen!

But then again, you did read in Tony Stark’s first memoir that he attended MIT at fifteen. So really you’re the odd one out, celebrating at the prospect of an interview.

“Yeah.” He hands you a few crumpled bills from his wallet, blushing as you straighten them out.

“That’s amazing,” you say. “This is a gift, right? I can wrap this for you, for free.”

“That would be good,” the boy says, nodding enthusiastically. 

You give him his change and the book, along with a fine-tip black marker. “You can write something on the inside cover for your girlfriend. It would be romantic.”

His blush deepens.  _ Young love, _ you think, as if you’ve loved enough in your life to be able to distinguish young love from old love, and turn around to pull out the roll of wrapping paper and scissors you keep stored somewhere in the back shelves. 

You shouldn’t do it.

But you’re stupid and you hate yourself, so when you turn around, you give the boy an award-winning, an _ employee-of-the-month- _ award-winning smile, and ask, “Have you ever met any of the Avengers?”

He’s in the process of capping the marker and quite nearly  _ jumps,  _ drawing a thin streak of black marker across his thumb.

“Uh, why- why would you ask that?” He asks, voice jumping up an entire octave.

He’s unreasonably nervous and you’re finding it unreasonably entertaining.

“Because you’re interning for Iron Man,” you say, and take the book and marker from him. 

You addressed this, like, _ twenty seconds ago. _ Maybe he got the internship through family connections.

“Oh!” He says again, and you can’t even be upset over the prospect that he might be benefiting off of nepotism, because he is so incredibly  _ dorky. _ “I get to meet them. Sometimes.”

You unroll the wrapping paper and glide the scissors along it, cutting off a chunk to wrap the book with. “Have you ever met Captain America?”

You haven’t ever said his name out loud before, you realize. The words bring an unfamiliar feeling with them, and you immediately wish you could swallow them back up.

The kid does too. His eyes widen, and he stammers out something incoherent.You fold the paper over the book in neat, crisp creases, trying to avoid forming little wrinkles, giving him a peppy smile all the while he struggles.

Finally, he gathers his senses. “Yeah. I- I meet, I mean I  _ met  _ him a few times.”

You pull little strips of tape from the tape dispenser. Five in total, one stuck to each finger on your nondominant hand, easy to peel off and stick to the paper. “You are _ so _ lucky,” you say, taking the tape off of your thumb, “I would, like,  _ die  _ if I met him. I’m a  _ major  _ fan.”

He’s gone silent.

For some reason, maybe because the way he’s blushing is so fucking funny to you, you go on. 

The tape on your pointer finger comes off. “He’s my favorite Avenger. One time he gave a speech at my university. I was, like,  _ obsessed  _ with it. I recorded the entire thing.”

You pull the tape off of your middle finger. “I know it’s dumb. I just  _ admire  _ him so much. He’s basically my  _ celebrity crush.” _

Was that too far? 

The tape on your ring and pinky fingers is pulled off carefully as you judge his reaction, looking up at him from under your eyelashes.

He’s red. And his mouth is open, like what you said is  _ unheard  _ of, but it’s really not, Captain America is hot! You wonder if the kid could handle you if you started waxing poetic about Captain America’s facial features. The masculine scruffiness of his beard, the seas of blue in his eyes that you’ve never seen, the gorgeous hair that begs you to run your fingers through it, which is always hidden under his hat.

You gather the words as you finish wrapping the book. You hold it in your hands and give it a once-over, making sure there’s no tears in the paper, no parts of the cover peeking through. 

The boy snatches it from you.

_ Snatches _ it.

“Thank you!” He chirps, voice rising up to another octave. “Have a nice day!”

That’s supposed to be your line, but you don’t have time to say it, because as the boy turns around and leaves, tucking the book under his arm and you realize why you found him familiar.

His walk- it’s a little awkward in that teenage way, like he’s hyper-aware of each of his limbs and none of them feel like they fit properly, but he walks like your almost-friend. Like a superhero.

***

The next day, you’re stuck in the back, rearranging the books in the mystery section. They’ve fallen into disarray, and your manager gave you a cardboard box full of new books to add to the shelves, so you’ve nearly dismantled the entire thing to reshelve it. One of your coworkers is up front, manning the cash register and greeting customers. You can hear her cheery hellos from all the way across the store.

You don’t feel cheery. Your interview is tomorrow, and even though you’re qualified for the position you’re  _ nervous. _ If you get it, you’ll get paid the same you do here, but you’ll have to quit this job. Which was coming eventually, but it makes you sad. You’ve been here for so long, could you say goodbye to this? To stocking shelves and getting books at discount prices and making teenage boys uncomfortable?

You don’t know.

Also, your shirt is  _ itchy. _

You bought some new t-shirts last week. Plain black, crewneck, in compliance with the dress code that Winnie’s son established a few years ago. But you didn’t think to wash them first with some fabric softener, or to cut off the stupid fucking  _ tag  _ on the inside of your shirt that’s grating at your neck, carving little scratches into your skin.

Wincing, you rub the back of your neck. It does absolutely nothing.

The door chimes, and someone walks in. You sigh and get back to work, pulling books from the cardboard box and trying to place them on the top shelf. It’s too difficult to reach, so you go to grab the step stool tucked away in the back corner.

Out from between the shelves, you get a glimpse of your coworker greeting the person, who you can’t see. They say something back, too low for you to hear. You grab the step stool and accidentally bump into the wall as you try to bring it back with you.

“Sorry!” You say, even though you really should be apologizing to the wall, as your coworker gives you a stare. The customer is probably giving one too, but you’ve disappeared back into the shelves.

The stool goes on the ground. You step onto it and start fixing up the shelf.

Whenever you raise your arms, the tag on your shirt chafes further on your neck. It hurts like hell, so you work quickly, stacking books at twice the speed than you’ve been doing the rest. Every few seconds, you try to adjust the collar of your shirt, hoping that something will stop the tag from fucking up your neck.

You step down from the stool when you’re done, arms blissfully back at your sides, and turn around to pick up the next bundle of books from the box.

You turn around and take a step straight into six feet of solid muscle.

***

Your nails are painted, as usual, but chipped, especially at the thumbs. They’re painted fire-engine red. 

Steve sees it and finds it cutely endearing, but then he thinks of Peggy and her red lipstick, and suddenly it’s too much, a pressure that is literally  _ collapsing  _ over his lungs and heart and it’s getting hard for him to breathe, and he might fall over and topple over the bookshelf, he’s seriously lightheaded-

You walk right into him.

He’s snapped back into the present.

You stumble, and Steve reaches out with his free hand, the other is clutching his hat and sunglasses, to steady you.

“Ohmygod I’m  _ so  _ sorry, I didn’t see you there,” you’re saying, clearly disoriented, and you’re rubbing the back of your neck as you look up at him and fall silent.

You’re shocked. Eyes wide, hand frozen behind your neck, staring up at him the way everyone else does. He makes the split-second decision to forgo his introduction and apology, even though he had practiced it religiously over the course of the mission, which took twenty-seven days longer than anticipated, but that’s just what HYDRA does, because such a long statement seems irrelevant know that he’s actually here, looking down at you.

“I’m Captain America,” he says.

You blink once. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ugh. this chapter needed to be written but it was just... not working. i didn't want to give steve such a big pov chunk at the beginning the way i did but it wasn't working when i kept it smaller. i really liked the part with peter tho!!! it was fun to write i <3 spidey boy. chapter 4 will be a fluff-fest, if it turns out the way i wrote it in my head LOL thanks for reading!!! hope u liked it. feel free to leave a comment if you wish, reading them really makes my day!!


	4. yellow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yall i don't even know... the friendship solidifies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is so long... and for what. i don't fucking know. but i'm not going to condense it. no beta we die like men.

Captain America stares at you, expression stoic and stone-cold _._ He drops his hand from your arm and takes a step back, and then another.

You wonder if he’s expecting you to be mad. Everything that happened with him feels so long ago- the memories well-worn and faded, tinted sepia at the edges, blurring and smudging together. You don’t have it in yourself to be mad, or even mildly annoyed.

Just by looking at him you can tell that he’s been through _something._ There’s a cut on his forehead that still looks fresh and dark bags sit under his eyes. His beard is trimmed unevenly, cut too short at some parts and too long on the others, and his upper neck is raw pink, like he scraped the stubble off with a blunt-edged knife.

Beyond the irritated skin, there’s big, ugly, purple-yellow splotches reaching from his neck down into the collar of his coat _. Bruises,_ you realize, not quite amorphous enough to be unconcerning. They’re in the shape of _handprints._

Who the fuck tried to strangle Captain America?

“You know?” he asks, sounding more weary than confused. Your stomach sinks.

You nod. “Yeah.”

“Sorry,” you add as an afterthought. 

Everything around you seems so trivial, so fucking childish. Superhero Steve Rogers is out saving the world, Avenging, doing God knows what because it’s his job, and you’re upset because your shirt is itchy. It’s all so, just- 

_-intense._

“You don’t have to apologize,” he says. His voice is authoritarian and rough like gravel, and you aren’t sure if you like it. “How long have you known?” He brings up a hand to his forehead. 

You smile awkwardly. “Um. Since you walked in. The first time.”

“Really?” 

The shocked outburst you’ve been anticipating doesn’t happen. Captain America just sighs and closes his eyes, and you wonder if it would be appropriate to ask if he’s okay, but the thought of doing or saying the wrong thing when he’s so clearly distraught terrifies you.

“Your disguise is shit,” you say instead, and then clap a hand over your mouth because holy shit that was _rude!_

Captain America gives you a withering look, and maybe he’s going to pull his shield out from somewhere to decimate you right here in the mystery section, and you won’t even blame him, and then he _laughs._

It’s the best sound you’ve heard all day. 

“That makes sense,” he says, and smiles.

His eyes crinkle at the corners with his smile, just like you thought they would, and you’re the one who caused it. You immediately forgive him for ditching you.

“Okay,” you say, and step past him to grab more books to shelve. “Is that all you wanted to say?”

It’s like nothing happened. You want him to say no.

“No,” he says. He steps out of your way as you get back on the step stool. “I wanted- I _want_ to talk to you.” 

The way he says it lets you know that whatever he’s going to say is going to be more than just a recommendation request. It’s so _daunting,_ with the way he’s standing and his eyes that look so hopeful and weary, and your heart is doing all sorts of weird things in your chest, and your brain is buzzing with so many thoughts at once that it’s just become white noise.

“I get off work in an hour,” you say stacking books on the second-highest shelf, wincing at the stupid tag on your neck. “We can talk after that? You can just meet me here.”

You stay on the stool and turn around, smiling down at him. He looks up at you, and you resist the urge to demurely pat the top of his head, like he’s a cat.

“That would be great,” he says, and goes to leave, putting the useless hat and sunglasses back on.

The bruising is even worse on the back of his neck, black and blue and in the shape of palms, the skin so dark and mottled that you cringe. 

***

When you get off work, you see Captain America in the window, back turned to you, standing sotic and disguised. As you zip up your puffy winter coat, you push the door open and head outside, bracing yourself for the cold and for him.

He turns right when the door clicks shut. It feels like deja vu, standing in the street while the sun is nearly set and there’s a bustle around you but you feel completely alone with him.

This is that feeling that they describe in the romance novels, you think, but rip that thought to shreds the second it occurs.

You approach him and pull out your gloves as he starts talking. One of them is inside out, and despite the cold that’s turning the tips of your fingers red and threatening to crack the skin around your knuckles, you take your time, fixing each finger of the glove individually.

Captain America runs through an apology that’s reminiscent of the speech he gave at your university- dull, convoluted, stuffed with words with words that make no sense. You can’t even bring yourself to care, it happened a month ago, time moves on, you want to say, just to get him to stop with his scratchy voice and his breath puffing out in little clouds in the evening air, you need him to stop.

“It’s okay!” You interrupt. “Seriously, uh, _Captain?_ It wasn’t a big deal. You’re fine.”

He removes a hand from his pocket and rubs his beard. You’re still in the view of the windows, you suddenly realize, so you take a tentative step towards him to make him back up, until your nosy manager or overeager coworkers don’t see you standing around with an extremely hot guy you haven’t seen in weeks.

“Call me Steve,” newly-minted Steve says. “I just- I feel bad/ And you were so helpful and nice to me, and I liked it-”

 _“Steve,”_ you interrupt, again, and his eyebrows rise up, but he doesn’t look upset. “It’s fine. Being nice to you is, like, part of my job. And if it wasn't, I would still be nice and whatever, because _yeah,_ but if you want to continue this, do you wanna go inside somewhere? It’s _freezing_ out here.”

Steve gives you a little half-smile that makes your heart do flips. 

There’s something different about him that you can’t quite place. Maybe the cold is messing with your head, making your brain lag and struggle to connect the Steve in your foggy memories of him to the Steve standing in front of you now.

It’s just… something.

***

You wind up sitting across from Steve in a booth of a greasy, poorly-lit diner. The seats are sticky, the table top even stickier, the waitress that comes up to you two frumpy and reeking of hairspray. But it’s warm, so it doesn’t really matter.

Steve asks for a coffee and you do the same. Coffee in the evening is a _terrible_ idea, but maybe the caffeine will help you focus, help you understand what the hell is actually going on.

It all feels like a fever dream. Captain America sitting across from you, who you’re now on first-name basis with, treating you like you’re a friend, while you smile and nod and try not to freak the fuck out. You don’t know what’s going on, why you’re here.

The walk had been _awkward._ You don’t know the etiquette you’re supposed to give superheroes when they’re actually aware that you’re aware of who they are, when you’re no longer in a work setting. Are you going to strike him as immature? What are his intentions? Again, what are you even doing here-

The waitress comes back with two mugs and the pot of coffee. Steve took off his disguise earlier, and now he angles his face away from her and towards the window, baring his bruises but concealing his identity.

She pours the coffee and you exchange a glance with Steve. He gives you a guilty, close-lipped smile.

You thank the waitress when she’s done and she stares, unimpressed, eyes flickering between you and Steve until she finally leaves.

A collective breath is released. Steve turns back to you, his knees knocking into yours underneath the table. It might just be an accident, but you’re high-strung enough for it to actually make you blush. Layers, you think. His jeans and your jeans, there’s enough layers to keep things… safe.

You reach for the little dish on the side that holds the sugar packets, hooking a finger on the inside and drawing it closer to you.

Steve flinches at the movement, like he was expecting you to reach out for him instead. You pretend like you don’t notice it and focus on sifting through packets of Stevia and other artificial sweeteners to find real sugar.

The silence stretches thin, ready to snap.

You break it as Steve brings his mug up to his lips, sipping black coffee without wincing at the taste.

“So,” you say, ripping open a pale blue packet of sugar and dumping it in your own mug, “I read this informational article about you in TIME Magazine, and it talked about who you are, but it never said that you were into romance novels.”

It’s an attempt at lighthearted conversation. You open another packet and gauge Steve’s reaction.

He’s struggling. A muscle in his jaw clenches.

“My therapist said I need a hobby,” he says.

Well, fuck.

Half of the contents of the third sugar packet land on the table instead of in your mug.

“It’s a good choice,” you say, avoiding his eyes, diligently sweeping the fallen sugar into a napkin. “Reading is fun.”

 _Reading is fun?_ God, that’s so fucking _trite!_ What the hell is wrong with you? If the booth cracked open and swallowed you whole, you would thank it. This is like every bad date you’ve ever been on compounded together, and it’s not even a date.

“It is,” Steve says. 

You want to run out and never look back.

“That’s a lot of sugar,” he adds, after taking a long sip of coffee.

At least you’re both suffering.

You stare down at your mug. The last of the sugar is dissolving. You mix it in with the spoon the waitress brought earlier, ignoring the way the metal is smudged.

Talking to him about his superhero persona is a no-go. He’s probably seriously fucked-up inside, _traumatized_ from saving the world over and over, perpetually angry from being expected to do it again.

You won’t talk about it. No matter how much you want to know things, like if he’s okay and if his neck hurts and if he likes bald eagles (national bird, after all), and if his favorite colors are red, white and blue.

The last question sounds like a shitty icebreaker teachers like to throw at you on the first day of school. But well, there’s ice between you and him that needs to be broken, and he’s got to be used to ice breaking, having been frozen in it for 70 years, and you can’t think of anything else to say.

“What’s your favorite color?” You ask, bracing your foot to kick yourself if this goes wrong.

“Yellow,” Steve says. 

No red, white, or blue? Where’s the patriotism, Steve?

“When I was a kid,” he says, drawing you out of your little bubble of confusion, “there was a florist a block from where I lived. And one time, my best friend Bucky and I stole flowers- which is _wrong_ but we never had any money- from there, yellow… daisies, I think. It was for my mom’s birthday. And they were the prettiest things I had ever seen.”

His admission leaves you silent. Bucky… it takes you too long to realize that he’s talking about the _Winter Soldier,_ the guy who was a suspect for the UN bombing a while back, the _assassin._ And that Steve’s childhood probably took place during the Great Depression, so he probably wasn’t just short of money because his mom didn’t give him an allowance, but because he was living in _poverty._

Your foot, poised perfectly against your shin, slips and jostles against his, accidentally playing footsie.

You sip some coffee to get yourself to start functioning normally, to figure out what to say to something like _that._

“My favorite color is purple,” you say. “Because I like… how it looks.”

Steve puts his elbows on the table and rests his head in his palms, leaning in closer to you. “Yellow and purple are complementary colors.”

Finally, _finally_ this conversation is going somewhere! Steve tells you he’s into art, and you, in a brief, once-in-a-lifetime spark of an actual _idea,_ pull out two pens from your backpack. Steve’s face lights up and it’s a victory.

You both draw each other on napkins, shielding your creations with your hands to stop each other from looking until they’re fully completed. Steve keeps on looking up at you, to figure out how your face “works,” he says, and you laugh it off, hoping he can’t see your unfading blush. You do the same, skipping over the cut and the under-eye circles and the bruises, attempting to draw him without any of it.

When he’s done, Steve shyly holds his napkin up for you to see. There’s blue smudges of ink on his fingertips. 

The breath is knocked right out of you.

In five minutes, he drew _you._ The nose is a little off, but everything else is _perfect,_ the little creases around your eyes, wrinkles-to-be, the shape of your earrings, the baby hairs flying around your hairline that you can never tame, the mole on your cheek that you never thought anyone noticed.

“Steve, what the _fuck,”_ you say.

You take the napkin from him and hold it in front of you, trying to comprehend how the _hell_ he did that.

He’s beaming, nudges his leg against yours underneath the table. “Show me yours.”  
It’s embarrassing to hold yours up.

Steve laughs so hard that he has to take sharp, wheezing breaths, little tears springing up in the corners of his eyes. The waitresses and other patrons turn and stare.

You can’t even be mad- his eyes are all misshapen, nostrils two gaping holes, his beard abhorrent, drawn in prickly lines like they’re porcupine quills, your attempt to draw his lips curled up in a smile looking more ghoulish than human.

It’s the thought that counts, he assures you, even though every time he glances back at it he bursts into another fit of laughter.

As he swipes at his eyes you put the napkin down and write your number in the bottom corner.

Steve stares down at it. 

You’re tempted to cross it out and shout “SIKE!” Your heartbeat pounds in your chest, sweat pooling up in the creases of your palms.

Steve takes the napkin from you and pulls out his phone.

He types your number in by tapping the screen with one finger, holding the phone eye-level and at least a _foot_ away from him. His little eyebrow-crease returns, good _God_ you want to smooth it out, and it takes him _minutes_ to type in _ten digits._

It’s your turn to laugh at him.

***

The _almost_ is no longer part of the equation. You and Steve Rogers are friends.

Friends!

He starts regularly coming to the bookstore. You give him recommendations, nearly going dizzy at the way he listens to you. He likes to text you pictures of the covers of whatever book he’s about to start. The photos are always shaky, his thumb blocking half of the camera and blurring the cover beyond recognition. Senior citizen headass.

Sometimes he comes in a few minutes before you get off, pretending to peruse the aisles until you’re taking off your lanyard and the two of you are off, walking around and talking and joking and stopping to sit somewhere warm and drink coffee.

That’s when you have the most fun with him, and when you’re the most tense.

It’s easy to be yourself around him. You can talk about whatever the fuck you want, put as much sugar in your coffe as you’re in the mood for, give scathing reviews of books you’ve read and he hasn’t, and it seems like he can bear all of it.

He doesn’t mind you pulling out your assignments to work on when you’re running behind on things. He’ll lean over the table and read your notes upside-down, teasing you for your atrocious handwriting. Of course, _Steve_ writes in perfect cursive, each letter meticulously precise, just like the rest of him.

His one flaw, if you can even call it that, is his unwillingness to talk about being Captain America. He can reference his Avenger friends by their first names, complain about the lack of obscure spots in a cafe that are safe for him to take off his disguise in. But after his first reveal, the topic hasn’t ever come up directly, not by him or by you.

Which is like… trying to ignore the huge, mammoth-like, star-spangled elephant in the room.

It doesn’t matter! Steve is so great that even you don’t share too many heavy details about yourself with him. It’s obvious that he needs some sort of respite from being a hero, and half the time you find yourself in disbelief that you’re actually a part of it.

***

“Did you ever finish _50 Shades of Grey?”_

Steve looks up from the bookmarks, immediately appalled. You’re unwrapping a roll of dimes and taking your sweet time with it, waiting for his answer.

“The _sex_ book?”

You grin and nod.

_“No.”_

“That’s a shame.” You dump the dimes in their compartment and pick out his change. “The best part is towards the end.”

“What happens?” He asks, already dreading the answer.

You reach out with his change and Steve brings his hand forward out of instinct. You drop the coins in his palm, fingers ghosting over his skin, and just _leave them there._

Steve doesn’t pull away. You lean over the counter, close enough that he could yank on your lanyard and tip you over into him, if he wanted. He can smell your perfume, too, something sharp and citrusy.

“Christian Grey, the boss,” you start, voice dangerously low, “pulls out his _riding crop_ and spanks Anastasia on her nip-”

Steve grabs his book off the counter, pulls his hand away from your fingertips, whirls around and barrels straight for the door.

You burst into loud, unprofessional laughter. “Sir! You forgot your receipt!”

He pushes open the door, and you’re still laughing, loud enough for heads to turn, and he grins, despite himself.

***

You never forget that Steve is a superhero. It’s his entire _brand,_ with the muscles and perfect teeth and over-polite mannerisms. But sometimes it’s jarring to be with him, to realize that all the stuff you watch on TV or have heated discussions about with your friends is his entire reality.

His head is low and he’s sporting fresh bruises on his cheek, and he’s too quiet, responding to everything you say with monosyllabic answers, or just no responding at all. He keeps his hands folded beside his overpriced cup of coffee, and you spot that his fingernails are caked with grime and little flecks of maroon.

You sit across from him, at a secluded table in the corner so that Steve could take off his disguise. The lighting in this trendy-hipster cafe is low, all the mismatched fixtures glowing weak enough to cast dramatic shadows all over the place. It looks more ominous than quirky, but whatever. 

There’s more important things to worry about.

He’s obviously upset with something that happened in his _other_ life, something you can’t even talk about. It’s an unspoken rule, and probably half the reason Steve sticks around anyways. But ignoring it now, with his face clouded over and his coffee untouched, just seems insensitive.

Empty sugar packets made of brown recycled paper sit discarded in the space between you and Steve. The last remnants are stuck on the inside, the rest already unceremoniously dumped in your coffee.

You take a sip of coffee. Then you reach forward, again not missing how Steve flinches at the movement, and sweep away the packets to the side of the table.

The packets are gone. The space is empty, until you move your hand back to the middle of the table. You can feel little grains of spilled sugar underneath your fingers.

Your hand is outstretched, like you’re about to give him his change, but that’s not what you’re offering.

Steve eyes it warily. After a few seconds, his eyes flicker up to yours, and you are so fucking glad that he took his sunglasses off, and an understanding passes between you and him, albeit slow and laden with tension.

He takes your hand.

He hesitates, and then intertwines your fingers with his thumb coming to rest close to your wrist.

His palms are calloused, rough compared to yours. Steve looks away, pointedly staring at the wall. You don’t question it, but just hope that he can’t feel your pulse in your wrist, because it’s _skyrocketing._

You don’t know how long you sit there. When you get up to leave, Steve doesn’t let go. It’s dark outside as he walks you home, and you don’t say one word.

Back in your apartment, while you watch TV and eat ramen for dinner, your phone chimes.

One new text message from Steve.

**_Thank you._ **

***

Steve has Bucky in a chokehold when his phone rings.

It could be someone important, so Steve immediately lets go and steps off the sparring mat, wiping the sweat off his palms on his shorts.

He picks up his phone and then almost drops it. Your name is on the caller ID.

You’ve never called him before.

Steve accepts the call, bringing his phone to his ear. He says your name and Bucky perks up, coming closer to the edge of the mat to eavesdrop. You rush out a greeting, voice slightly ragged, maybe from poor reception.

“Do you drink?” You ask. Something behind you clatters loudly.

“I drink,” Steve says, hesitantly. Bucky raises an eyebrow. “But it doesn’t have any… effect on me. Because of the serum.”

Silence from your end, nothing but your slightly labored breathing.

He’s about to ask if you’re okay when you finally speak up. 

“I, um, I was going to ask if you wanted to come over and… hang out. Drinking by yourself is, like, _super_ depressing, and then I thought of you, but like you don't have to come if you don’t have to. I just thought I would… check.”

Steve waits for you to finish, ignoring Bucky’s grin, ignoring his heart rate spiking up even higher than it was when he was sparring.

“I’ll be there,” he says, surprising himself more than he would have liked.

“Really?” Something behind you falls again, filling the speaker with static. “Great. I’ll text you the details and stuff. Bye, Steve!”

You hang up before Steve has a chance to say goodbye.

He puts his phone down and picks up his water bottle, taking a long drink while Bucky grins from ear to ear, shaking his head like Steve just did something important.

“Got a date, Rogers?”

Steve almost spits out his water. “No! It- It’s… hanging out.”

As the youngsters say. 

“Hanging out,” Bucky repeats, unconvinced. “If you say so.”

Steve doesn’t believe himself any more than Bucky does.”

***

“I like your nails.”

Even though Steve is just casually sitting on your sofa, he is absolutely _dwarfing_ it. Everything in your apartment seems significantly smaller with Steve around. He takes up a _lot_ of space.

At least you’re tipsy enough to no longer feel embarrassed about your shitty furniture. You feel loose, airy, even, all of the disappointments of the day eased off your shoulders. So what if the internship you interviewed for went to the boss’s nephew instead of you? You feel great, so it doesn’t matter.

(You definitely _weren’t_ great when you called, but that’s in the past now.)

Steve has considerably loosened up, too. You were expecting him to be uptight and stingy, maybe bothered because he had to bring up the serum over the phone. But he’s been the opposite- warm, sunny, trading easy smiles with you and now _compliments,_ all of it completely unprompted.

You grin and wave your hands around, letting the navy-blue paint catch the light. “Thank you! I did them myself.”

“Wow,” Steve says.

You had taken a seat on your shitty secondhand chair instead of on the other side of the sofa, just to keep things safe. Now you stand up and go sit there, another thing that doesn’t get a reaction out of Steve the way you would expect.

“Steve,” you say, _“Steven._ I have an idea.”

Steve smirks and you die right there.

Just kidding. “What’s your idea?” He tilts his head back to look at you.

“Let me do your nails.”

Your brain is _not_ keeping up with your mouth. Even in your half-drunk state, you can make out the surprise flickering on his face, and your heart sinks. _Why_ would you say that? Sure, Steve might be secure enough in his masculinity to read romance novels, to but he’s probably not secure enough to handle a whole fucking _manicure,_ and even if he was, that’s the dumbest fucking idea _ever-_

“Okay,” he says.

You stare at him dumbly for the better part of a minute before you’re able to process what he said.

In a shoebox you keep your bottles of polish, cotton balls and nail-polish remover. You bring it to your tiny kitchen table, silently thanking Steve for not commenting on how beaut-up it is, with its scratches and gouges and patches of discolored wood.

You crack open your kitchen window for better air circulation, so that the smell of acetone doesn’t linger. The cold night air rushes in and you feel so _proud_ of yourself, so adult! You're hanging out with someone at night and you’re doing everything responsibly, opening windows and spreading a sheet of newspaper on the table and asking Steve if he wants another drink.

Sure, you’re doing the same things that you did at third-grade sleepovers. But you’re doing it like a _grown-up._

You sit across from Steve and open the shoebox, pushing it forward so he can see. “What color?”

Steve must be indulging you, because he peers over all the bottles with the same seriousness you imagine he uses at work. “Yellow.”

You take the bottle of yellow nail polish out of the shoebox. Your hands are a little shaky, and your vision is slightly blurry, fuzzy at the corners, but you are going to give Captain America the best yellow nails he’s ever had in his life.

Except his hands are even shakier than yours. You can barely paint his left thumb and ring finger before just placing your other hand flat over his to studly it. You can feel the ridges of his knuckles under your skin, suddenly stilled, but you choose to focus on the bristles of the brush instead.

You fill up the silence with random, meaningless chatter as you paint. A random story about the cat you had when you were a kid, and as you’re finishing up the left hand and approaching the right, a chunk of hair falls in front of your face, obscuring your face.

Steve tucks it back behind your ear with his right hand before you even have the time to put the brush down.

Half of you wants to tell him to fuck off, becase your face is heating up and you can still feel the brush of his fingertips against the skin near your ear, light as a butterfly, and all of this _different_ behavior is confusing you beyond explanation. 

The other half of you tells you to not say anything and to just focus on painting his nails. And that’s what you do.

You paint his right hand carrying on with the same amiable conversation, acting like nothing happened. 

You’re almost done, and all of the intense concentration has you sobering up, unfortunately. Steve doesn’t know about your unsuccessful interview, and you don’t know if you want to tell him. It’s dumb to complain about internships you didn’t get to Captain America, whose minor problems probably mirror your worst reminders.

But that reminds you.

“I met someone who knows you,” you say, interrupting your own conversation.

Steve startles. A streak of yellow goes over the edge of his cuticle. You swipe it away. “Who?” He asks, poorly feigning nonchalance.

“This high school kid. He has an internship?” You’re just finishing up his pinky, and he’s flushing pink.

“Yeah,” Steve says, sounding relieved and strangled at the same time. “That’s Peter. He- he is an intern. He… interns”

“I bet.”

His nails are all done, so you screw the cap back on the bottle. Steve brings his hands off the sheet of newspaper and inspects them underneath the dim light, turning them to watch the light reflect in different ways.

He brings his hands up higher and you give him a double-high five. The surprise on his face makes you laugh.

“They look really nice.” Steve starts gently fluttering his hands in the air to dry them. The mannerism is so natural, like he’s seen someone do it before, and it’s so soft and tender that you want to hug him-

“I told Peter you were my favorite Avenger,” you blurt out.

 _After_ you say it your mind catches up with you and you want to hit yourself.

Steve’s face doesn’t sour, his mouth doesn’t twist. Surprise, again. He blinks once, caught off guard, and then a lazy smile spreads over his face, sucker-punching you in the gut, obliterating the one _shred_ of rational thought you had left.

“Why me?” He sounds amused, like you’re entertaining to him. Or possibly endearing.

“Because…” it’s hard to find words when you can’t _think._ Steve watches your struggle with the same glee you felt watching Peter squirm. Karma, karma.

“Because?” 

Because he’s nice. And fun to be around. And his face is like _wow._ And he probably has a six-pack, not that you’ve thought about it, and he saves the world and lets you paint his nails, and he actually listens to whatever shit you come up with, even though it’s all trivial and unserious.Steve stares at you, expectant. His hands are still adorably up in the air.

You reach out and poke his hand. “Because you have the coolest uniform.”

He frowns, so obviously disappointed in a way that secretly makes you pleased. “Thank you.”

Of course, that’s when everything becomes awkward.

You fidget in your seat, Steve fidgets in his. The open window brings in a gust of freezing air.

“I- I think I'm, gonna go now.”

He moves in a graceful flurry, standing up and pushing in his chair and gingerly picking up his jacket and getting to the door while you only have time for one breath.

At least his good American manners make him wait for you to come to the door to see him off.

Steve says your name, once, and then he’s unlocking the door with more deftness than you could ever pull off, and he’s gone, leaving you alone and completely _bewildered._

Later, Steve texts you.

It’s a photo you took on his phone earlier. He’s in the background, holding a cup to his mouth, mid-sip while reaching to you to take his phone back, and you’ve jammed your face in the front, grinning and throwing up a peace sign. It’s probably the least blurry photo in his entire camera roll.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wooo thanks for reading!!!! an idea i really like is unconventional scenes that are still slice of life... like drawing on diner napkins and painting nails because yes. steve said fuck bitches that don't paint their nails. next chapter reader is gonna meet natasha and bucky and it's gonna be baller, if it goes how i wrote it in my head (and steve and reader might finally k*ss but we'll see about that dhkfsjdkjflskdj)  
> kudos and comments are always appreciated!


	5. business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bucky and natasha are scary. you and steve have a variety of encounters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy moly guacamole... this chapter is 7936 words why did i do this to myself. also heads up i was half-asleep writing most of this so if you read the same adjective 3 times in the same paragraph that's why.

The door chimes and two people walk in. They both wear thick-soled, military-grade combat boots that fall heavy against the floor as the head towards you.

You shift your gaze past the customer you’re dealing with and your mouth runs dry.

There, surveying the bookstore in a manner that’s more than awestruck, are two people that you can easily identify as Black Widow and the Winter Soldier.

Steve’s friends.

Black Widow reaches you first, waiting for you to finish up with the customer before taking their place in front of you. She has red hair and perfect makeup, and gives you an intense stare as you smile and hand over a receipt and pretend she isn’t there. You hope she’s just here for books, maybe just needs help navigating the shelves, or wants to ask if she can buy the entire Harry Potter collection in a boxed set. Something normal, non-superhero related.

The Winter Soldier, Bucky, you remember Steve saying, sidles up to her, notably close. When the customer is out of earshot, Black Widow comes closer to the counter, leaning in towards you.

“Hi,” she says, giving you a perfect smile. “I’m Natasha.”

She’s so pretty that it’s intimidating. But you’re stupid and choose to assume the best, so you ignore the introduction (customers never introduce themselves, that’s _ weird)  _ and proceed with your job.

“Hi!” You chirp. “Welcome to Winnie’s Bookstore. How can I help you?”

You give her your best customer-service smile, acting like you have no idea who she is.

What the  _ fuck  _ is another  _ Avenger  _ doing in your bookstore? And a fucking _ ex-assasin?  _ Your fingers itch to reach for your phone, just to see if Steve sent a text you missed about his friends dropping in. Rationally, you know that nothing is going to happen to you, but given the way they’re looking at you after you spoke, you know that they’re not here for books.

“I want to talk to you,” Natasha says. She sticks out her hand over the counter for you to shake. “Steve has told us so much about you.”

“Likewise,” You blurt out, tentatively reaching for her hand. “But I can’t really talk right now, because I’m working-”

“There’s nobody in here,” the Winter Soldier says. 

His voice is gruff and so apathetic that it’s terrifying.

You do a long scan of the bookstore, and he’s right. it’s entirely desolate, not one person in sight. Even the discount table, usually so crowded with people rifling through stacks of cheap paperback novels, is completely empty.

Well then. 

Natasha’s hand is cold as ice and smaller than yours. She gives you a cordial handshake for a second, and then completely  _ grips  _ your hand, squeezing so hard that pain blooms through your fingertips. 

She doesn’t let go until the Winter Soldier nudges her in the side, giving you a look that’s somehow glaring and amused at the same time. 

You shake your hand, trying to smile through the pain, and gingerly bring it back to your side.

“Okay,” you say, trying to sound casual and completely failing when your voice wobbles, “what do you want to talk about?”

_ Please  _ say books. Literature.  _ Any  _ type of literature. Even Western classics written before 1950, even the newest Dan Brown. Just nothing, nothing about Steve. Talking about him to his best friends feels wrong, like you’re admitting something that you’d rather keep private.

Your nerves are coiled up so tight that your hands go clammy. Natasha doesn’t miss you wiping your palms on your jeans, but at least she doesn’t comment on it. If she wasn’t so unnerving, you would  _ totally  _ ask her for an autograph. And maybe a picture, too, sandwiched between her and the Soldier, one that you could slap a filter on and post to Instagram, to prove to other people and yourself that your life isn’t as boring as everyone thinks it is. 

(They are both  _ stupid  _ hot.)

“Your future,” Natasha says, cocking her head to the side so that her hair rustles. She has perfect hair, you think.

“My future,” you repeat, relief crashing over you, and then followed by another bout of nervousness. It’s not book-related conversation, and it’s not about Steve, which is the only reason you could fathom them being here, but you can try to not embarrass yourself.

Natasha nods, waiting for you to start.

The Winter Soldier stares at you, eyes steely and impassive.

You try to swallow back the nervousness. “Um. I’m going to get my MBA. And then I’ll probably get a job at a corporation for a few years? And then one day I’ll maybe open my own business-”

“Your future with  _ Steve,” _ the Winter Soldier interrupts, again.

Oh God.

His voice is still gruff, but a little bit of the apathy has worn off. You suddenly remember a few stories that Steve has told you about him, the antics they’d get up to in Brooklyn, about the dumb shit they still do even now.

There’s one story he told you recently, about how when the Winter Soldier (you can’t bring yourself to think of him as Bucky, not yet) first discovered gummy bears, he ate three bags of Haribo in one sitting. He buys them in family-sized packs and is fiercely protective of them, Steve said, and now you try to keep an image of this six-foot-something man shoveling gummy bears in his mouth, while the man himself stares you down with his murder gaze.

“You could’ve said that to begin with,” you say. It’s a little bit easier to keep your tone light and joking.

They stare at you in silence. 

You stare back, still smiling, even if there’s no manager around to watch how you interact with customers.

“I… I don’t know what you’re waiting for me to say,” you say eventually.

The Winter Soldier exchanges a long look with Natasha. She laughs lightly.

“Honey,” she says, leaning forward over the counter, just like Steve does, “do you like him?”

The nickname combined with the question suddenly has you feeling like you’re in high school again, like Natasha is your school counselor or one of your parents’ friends. She is obviously older than you, but you’re not fucking  _ fourteen  _ anymore.

Indignation flares up inside of you, making you talk before you think. “Yeah,” you bite out, “I like him.”

There. You admitted it! It was way easier than you were thinking. You feel content with your admission for the entire duration of about one second, when your mind finally catches up and starts screaming at you because you just told Captain America’s _ best friends _ that you have a  _ crush  _ on  _ Captain America. _ You don’t know what weapons Black Widow uses, but if the Winter Soldier decides to choke you to death with his metal arm, you’ll be grateful.

_ “Please _ don’t tell Steve I said that,” you blurt out, pathetically, and good grief, maybe you  _ are  _ still fourteen.

Natasha smiles at you, all glittery and fake. “You are  _ so  _ cute. I can see why you like Steve.”

The insult is so acutely barbed that you wonder why she didn’t just call you out.

You’re not naive. Or stupid, or childish, or whatever these people think you are, just because you’re crushing on a guy who just  _ happens  _ to be a superhero, who just  _ happens  _ to be handsome and shredded and tall. You’re not the most articulate person out there, but has this whole interaction really painted you so shallow

But then again, if you think about it, you can’t blame Natasha for being rude. She and the Winter Soldier have been through all types of shit, and it’s only natural that they would be wary of you, a total outsider to their world. They’ve probably met enough fake people to last a lifetime.

You’ll be nice to them, you decide, for Steve’s sake.

“Thanks,” you say amiably, adjusting your nametag. “Now, can I help you guys find something?”

Natasha’s mouth twists. You feel too much satisfaction in seeing her uncomfortable. 

“Sure,” the Winter Soldier says. You turn to him, anticipating something rude, a question that’s more interrogating than curious. “Show me one of those books that Steve’s always reading.”

He gives you a small, crooked flash of a smile.

You could jump with joy.

So you take them to the romance section. It’s a good thing that the store is quiet today- the two of them are bound to get stray looks, what with the way you’re dressed. Black pants, black shirts, shiny black leather jackets. Ridiculously attractive hair. 

The Winter Soldier doesn’t listen to you like Steve does. He’s more concerned with the store layout than the actual books, peeking through gaps in shelves and around corners, as if someone is lurking behind him. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why he does it, why he’s so cautious and on guard.

Eventually, after explaining the genre and giving a few halfhearted recommendations that the Winter Soldier zones out for the entirety of, you wave a hand to the shelves and suggest that he just picks one out at random. They’re all trashy romance anyway, you tell him.

“Go for it,” you say.

The Winter Soldier redirects his murder gaze to the shelves.

Something in the walls crashes.

He jumps, Natasha startles, they both pull out fucking  _ blades  _ from God knows where and switch to fighting stances before you even have the time to _ breathe. _ You stand there, shocked.

The Winter Soldier looks crazed, Natasha completely driven on murdering the first thing that she sees moving, even if,  _ especially  _ if it’s you.

“That’s the plumbing!” You say, voice squeaky-high, trying to defuse the situation before it escalates to the point of your apparent death. “We have, like, a faulty pipe or something. It scares the shit out of me, too.”

Cussing in front of customers is completely unprofessional, but you doubt that either one of them are going to write you up. 

Slowly, with great reluctance, they both return their knives to the inner linings of their jackets, so  _ that’s _ where they keep them, and go back to standing normally. They still look high-strung, the absolute  _ farthest  _ thing from relaxed, but saying anything else about the situation seems wrong. So you flip the opposite way.

“Pick a book!” You say, completely ignoring what happened, which somehow earns a small nod of  _ approval  _ from Natasha.

The Winter Soldier finally,  _ finally  _ stops looking homicidal and picks out a book from the shelves, pulling out a novel with way more glee than you were anticipating. It has a lime-green dust jacket and looks ridiculously small in his ungloved hand. You stifle a laugh.

Natasha cracks a small smile.

“That’s a great choice, sir,” you say, even though you haven’t actually read the book he’s holding, just the reviews.

“You can call me Bucky,” Bucky says.

You blink once in surprise. 

“Okay, Bucky” You turn to Natasha. “Can I help you find anything?”

She crosses her arms. The little zippers on the cuffs of her jacket jingle with the movement. “No,” she says, without malice.

***

Bucky and Nat get off the elevator holding hands, which isn’t particularly noteworthy anymore, but the plastic bag that Bucky’s holding in his free hand certainly is.

Steve’s gotten to the point where he could recognize it from a mile away. Thick plastic, cream-colored. _ Winnie’s Bookstore _ emblazoned on the front of the bag in deep blue font, with a little book graphic underneath the letters.

When he sees Steve, Bucky lifts up the bag. “We met your girl!”

“She’s not my girl,” Steve says, probably way too quickly for it to be nonchalant, and then adds, for whatever reason, “do you like her?”

Natasha lightly pulls her hand away from Bucky’s and takes a seat in the armchair across from Steve.

“She is very sweet,” she says, smiling wide. She lifts a hand to flip her hair away from her face.

There’s more that she wants to say. Something that’s either extremely good or extremely bad, but she doesn’t say it. 

“We got you a book,” Bucky says. He tosses the bag towards Steve, blook still inside. Steve raises one had to catch it.

“Did you get it from the back?” Steve pulls it out of the bag. Lime-green dust jacket, which, after seeing you do it, he’s gotten in the habit of using as a bookmark.

“I just pulled it out at random.” Bucky flops on the armchair next to Natasha, wriggling close next to her. “Your  _ businesswoman  _ helped us out.”

Steve looks up from the book, confused. “Businesswoman?”

Natasha gives him a look. “She’s studying business in school. Did you not know that?”

Vaguely, Steve remembers the assignments you sometimes work on, the notes you pore over, haphazardly scribed on loose-leaf paper that you keep a thick stack of in a folder. He’s read a few of them, although he’s more fascinated with how committed you are to your education than what the notes actually say.

(It sounds cheesy because it is cheesy- he likes smart women.)

“No,” Steve says, and the words feel funny and wrong in his mouth. “I didn’t.”

Bucky shrugs. “Doesn’t matter.

Natasha very obviously wants to say, _ yes, it does, _ and Steve wholeheartedly agrees with her. It’s such a major part of your life- how could he  _ not  _ know? But she doesn’t say anything, and eventually just gives Steve a sympathetic glance.

“You’re right,” she says to Bucky. “It’s not like any of us have any degrees, anyway.”

They sit in silence for a minute to contemplate that.

“I really liked her,” Bucky says at last. “She’s cute.  _ Nothing  _ like Peggy, which I would’ve thought would be a big turn-off, but I can tell why you like her so much.”

“She makes me feel normal,” Steve says, and hates how much it sounds like an excuse for hanging out with you.

Admitting it to himself is awful, stinging as bad as the betrayal it is, but aside from the time you had painted your nails red, Steve doesn’t  _ ever  _ think of Peggy when he’s with you.

Peggy was ambitious and strong. She kept her hair in perfect 1940s curls, wore broad-shouldered suits and bright red lipstick that he adored, and knew her way around a rifle. She spoke in tight, clipped syllables, ever the Englishwoman, and always,  _ always  _ expected nothing less than excellence. She was powerful and wonderful and Steve will always love her.

And you? You might be ambitious and strong, too, but you don’t let it show. At least not to him.

Your hair is often frizzy, easily mussed by the wind, sometimes lies flat whenever you steal his hat and wear it on your own head. You wear loose jeans and black t-shirts to work, and chunky sweaters and mismatched earrings outside of work. Your words are always casual, with a general American accent, no trace of the east-coast he would expect, which is a hint at another story that he has yet to hear.

You don’t expect anything from him. Nothing more than what he’s willing to give. And you are wonderful, too, in your own type of way.

(But is he giving enough? Are you?)

***

“Steve, holy hell, your friends are cool as _ fuck.” _

You’ve come outside to meet him in a rush, tucking your phone in your pocket and zipping your coat up all the way to your chin and trying to get your backpack on your shoulders all at the same time.

Steve laughs out loud. “They liked you too!” He grabs the strap of your backpack that keeps on evading your grasp and slides it over your arm. It’s cold, the first snowfall of the year is expected soon, but Steve’s hands are unbelievably warm. You can feel the heat radiating off of them all the way through your coat.

“Oh, I’m glad.” You move around a little and Steve pulls his hand away from your arm. You pull your gloves out from your pocket and slide them on while you start to walk, trying to fight off the frigid chill that’s overtaking your legs. “They were super intimidating. But also badass.”

When your gloves are on you bring your arms back to swing at your sides. You get maybe two, three strides of unrestrained movement when Steve’s fingers brush against your hand. You glance down and smile when you see the yellow paint that’s starting to chip away from his fingernails, but still proudly stands out. They get lost from your sight when he wraps his hand around yours.

So this is a thing you do now. After the first time he had a bad day, and all the subsequent bad days, you’ve always offered your hand to him, and he always takes it. It’s gotten to the point where you don’t have to offer anymore, he just takes it.

You’re friends that  _ sometimes  _ hold hands.

You’re too delighted with the promotion from friends that  _ never  _ hold hands to properly question it.

“Also,” you add, because the sensation of holding hands with him makes you feel too giddy to think properly, “how come all of you guys have such awesome hair? Is that, like, a prerequisite for being an Avenger?”

Steve lets out a startled exhale. “You think I have nice hair?”

You swing your joined hands up as you walk, and then back down. “Yeah. I do.”

“Thank you.” He says your name, voice lilting, and reaches up with his other hand to pat your head, like  _ you’re _ the cat, and you like how it feels to the point where you could literally _ purr.  _ “You’re not too bad yourself.”

“Thanks, Steven.”

He’s turning pink, you’re sure of it. You tilt your head to the side to look at him, and there he is, blushing all the way up to his ears as if you’ve said something  _ scandalous,  _ like that in high school you never stood up for the Pledge of Allegiance, or that you don’t know all the words to the national anthem.

The overpriced hipster cafe you’re heading towards has its entrance on the right, and Steve opens the door for you, because he’s chivalrous like that. You duck under him to step inside, sighing loudly as the warmth hits your bones, and Steve just blushes harder.

Your heart  _ swells  _ at the sight, and you know right then and there that you are royally _ fucked. _

“Let me ask you a question,” he says as you get in line, sounding too serious. You pull your eyes away from the pastry display case, debating on whether you should order a slice of lemon cake or not, and turn to look at him again.

“I’m listening,” you say, and regretfully let go of his hand to pull off your gloves.

“Why don’t you ever talk about college?”

You freeze. “It never comes up.”

Honestly, it’s because whenever you talk about school you have to reach the surface of a million other heavy, consequential things, like adulting and careers and interviews and business suits and resigning from your current job. And with Steve you try to do your best to avoid heavy, consequential topics, so that he never feels obligated to share his own details about being Captain America, a topic he somehow  _ vehemently  _ hates, despite it being the core fiber of his very being.

“But  _ why?”  _ Steve asks, slightly agitated in a way that makes you nervous. “Do you not feel comfortable talking about those things with me?”

The people in front of you move up in the line and you quickly follow, taking the time to gather a response. Everything suddenly feels dangerous.

“Of course I feel comfortable,” you say quickly.

His gaze is burning and intense, too similar to Natasha's for your liking. You look back at the cake, glazed with pale yellow icing, flaky at the corners and dusted with powdered sugar.

“Then why don’t you talk about it?” Steve presses.

“I don’t want to upset you!” You say, exclaiming quietly so nobody around you can hear. “Because, like, if I talk about all of these things that are important to me, I get worried that you’ll feel like you have to talk about  _ your  _ important stuff, too. And I don’t want you to feel like that.

The subject you’ve been so carefully tiptoeing around for the past few months has finally been broached, stomped all over, covered in muddy footprints.

Steve is shocked silent. You can’t tell if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. 

It’s your turn to order, so you turn away to Steve, blissfully reprieved from his hurt gaze. It sounds horrible, but you wouldn’t even mind if he decided to put the sunglasses back on, which he’s been ditching lately in favor of just the hat.

You order two coffees, just the usual, trying not to sound as distressed as you feel.

At the very last second, you turn to Steve. “Do you like lemon cake?”

Steve’s own dismay is briefly clouded over with confusion. “I’ve never tried it.”

You add it to the order.

The two of you silently sit at a table while waiting for the barista to call your name. You can feel his eyes burning like fire into your back when you get up to retrieve your order. Two coffees and a thick slice of lemon cake, and  _ two  _ forks, which the  _ insufferably  _ hipster barista with a septum piercing handed to you with a knowing smile.

Steve watches you, silent and unwavering, as you carefully section out a piece of cake for yourself with the tines of your fork. It’s unnerving, especially because he has yet to talk. He just sits there, sipping his coffee, while you wonder if it would be too weird to pull out your laptop and do some reading. You’re suddenly hyper-aware of every little movement you make, of every breath you take.

Is your chewing really that loud, or does it just sound louder because Steve is being extremely quiet? Do you have cake in your teeth? Is it possible for you to cringe yourself into oblivion?

The fork scrapes against your teeth. You hate yourself.

Steve clears his throat, thank _ God. _

“So why did you pick business?”

_ Ugh. _ Nevermind.

You slump back in your seat, bringing your palms up to press against your forehead. “Why are you so upset about this?”

Steve defensively folds his arms across his chest. For a second, all you can focus on is the way this arms flex.

“I don’t think that  _ Nat  _ should know more about something that important to you than _ I _ do.”

_ Natasha  _ told him? About your future? Did she solely stick to the professional aspects, or did she delve into the  _ personal  _ parts of it, too? Now that you think about it, she didn’t actually say that she wouldn’t tell Steve that you-

“What all did Natasha and Bucky tell you?” You frantically ask, leaning forward in your seat.

He raises an eyebrow. You resist the urge to pull the tip of his hat forward over his eyes, so that you don’t have to feel your neck heat up and your pulse race under his gaze.

“They told me,” he starts, slowly smiling in a way that makes your stomach turn, “that you’re really sweet.” He hesitates for a second. “And cute.”

Okay, you’re dead.

Did Steve just… is he… 

...Who taught Captain America how to flirt?

You open and close your mouth repeatedly, grasping for something,  _ anything  _ to say. Feverishly, you wait for the other shoe to drop, for him to say that he’s just messing with you, that he wanted to entertain your stupid crush on him for a second, just for a quick laugh.

He doesn’t say anything else.

“Well, duh,” you awkwardly joke, leaning back and barely relaxing “have you looked at me?” You dramatically run a hand through your hair.

Steve laughs, but there’s something else in his eyes.

“So tell me about business,” he finally says, voice low, as if business is a friend of yours and not an impossibly broad subject that you’re betting your entire life on.

You push the plate where the cake sits towards Steve. “Try this first.”

Steve picks up the fork resting on the other side of the plate.

“At first I had no idea what I wanted to do,” you say, while he cuts himself a piece of cake. “But then I declared business as my major, and it turns out I’m pretty good at it,, and now I’m in a five-year program to get my MBA.”

Steve frowns. “That’s it?”

You shrug. “Yeah. I’m not that interesting.”

He looks like he’s about to argue with your statement as he pops the piece of cake in his mouth.

The surprised pleasure that rolls over his features is enough to make you blush. You’ve never been more grateful for the shitty faux-hipster lighting of the cafe than you are right now.

_ “Wow.” _ Steve says. He licks a stray smudge of frosting off of his fork. “We never got food that good in the army, I can tell you that.”

“Steve, I said that you don’t have to tell me-”

He waves your panicked expression off. “I  _ want  _ to tell you,” he says, and digs into the slice of cake for another bite.

***

Over the course of the last few weeks, Steve has become  _ relentless.  _ He looks over all the notes you keep in your folders without making fun of your handwriting. He listens to your recorded lecture with you, sitting close to you and sharing your earbuds. He has you email him a copy of an essay you wrote for a final last year, and he reads the entire thing, going so far as to even leave positive  _ feedback. _

And he’s changing things up, too. He tells you about the war and the Howling Commandos, somehow manages to find a photo of his scrawny pre-serum self and shows it to you. He complains about how difficult it is to wash blood out of the spandex of his uniform, and how if he wasn’t scientifically enhanced he would probably have hearing damage from hearing so many close-range gunshots, all of which terrifies you and intrigues you to no end. Per your request, he shows you how to throw a punch, appalled when you first attempt it with your thumb tucked inside of your fist.

Then there’s… other things.

Hand-holding. Intense stares. Hanging out. Once, when messing around in his photo settings, he accidentally sets his background to a picture of you and him that  _ he  _ took, thumb covering the edge of the camera and shaky photo quality. When you offer to change it, he says  _ no.  _ So it stays. Your face, pulled close next to his in a blurred grin, is on Captain America’s lock screen. 

You like it all too much to even entertain the question of titles, of labels.

“So,” Steve says, fluttering his hands. He sits across from you at your table, nails freshly painted sunburst orange.

You look up at him for a second, pausing your brush against your own nails mid-swipe. “So.”

“What do you think of the stock market?”

“Why are you asking me about the stock market?” You ask tiredly, looking back at your nails. Only two of them are done, painted powdery lilac. The rest are still bare, smelling of acetone from the nail polish remover that you used to rub off the last traces of navy blue.

Steve shifts in his seat, giving you a puzzled expression that you don’t see. “Those are businesses, right?” 

You grimace. “Yeah, but like…”

But like you’re not  _ forty, _ Steve. Literally  _ anything  _ else would make for more interesting conversation. 

Taxes. Inflation. Foreign policy, the student debt crisis, gerrymandering. _ Anything  _ else.

Steve doesn’t catch on. If anything, he’s more excited at having got something actually right. You look up at him after painting two more nails and he’s grinning, and _ Jesus holy fuck _ you’ll have a conversation with him about fucking  _ stocks  _ if it means he’ll keep that smile on.

“Are  _ you  _ an investor? In Google? Or Facegroup?” Steve asks, crashing back down in terms of knowing what he’s talking about.

You have to put the brush down, laughing makes your hand shake too bad. 

“Oh my god,” you say, smothering down the rest of your laughter, and he sits there, so perfectly and handsomely clueless, “you sound just like my  _ dad.”  _

He’s up in a second, nearly falling out of the chair. “Am I the same age as- as your  _ father?” _

Good grief.

You’re laughing so hard that it takes you a minute to realize that Steve is having a mini crisis in the middle of the apartment, halfway entertaining the notion of leaving right then and there.

When you realize, you can’t laugh anymore. You slide off your chair and carefully, with your one painted hand held at a distance so you don’t get paint on your clothes, you make your way over to where he stands, edging closer and closer to the door.

“No, you’re not,” you say, and step in front of him, blocking him from the door. “My dad is pushing _ fifty, _ not  _ one-hundred.” _

Steve gives you a look, but he smiles anyway, shoulders relaxing. “That’s not funny.”

“And I don’t invest,” you continue, because Steve is such a good listener and naturally inquisitive, “because I am literally broke. After I pay rent I have like  _ two dollars _ left to spend. And you don’t invest in Google, you invest in its parent company, Alphabet. And it’s called Facebook, Grandpa.”

“I’m not your grandpa,” Steve says, voice suddenly rough, and you’re suddenly extremely close to him. 

Rather than looking him in the eyes, you focus on counting the individual rows of stitches you can make out on his shirt, your back pressed up against the door and him less than a foot away, staring down at you. You could look back up at him and count each of his individual eyelashes instead, if you wanted to. Nervously, you start fiddling with your hands, waiting for the proximity to stop. It’s up to him to step back, to give you space, to create distance so that things stop being so heavy and tension-laden and awfully awkward, what with the way you’re standing and he’s towering over you, and he doesn’t step back.

There is  _ no way _ that he can’t hear your heart beating dangerously fast in your chest.

“I know that,” you say, voice too breathy for you to be proud of, and you bite back the question that starts nagging at you.  _ What are you? _

***

You’re on your tiptoes in the bookstore, trying to plush a book in the wrong spot off the shelf, when Steve starts up again.

“Who’s your favorite Fortune 500 CEO?”

You sputter out a laugh, but make the split-second decision to entertain him this time. Maybe doing so will stop another  _ situation  _ from happening, and you won’t be pressed up against any doors and will be a safe and  _ respectable  _ distance away from him.

“Tony Stark,” you say, and flail your hand around, hopelessly trying to knock the book off the shelf.

From the corner of your eye, you can see Steve standing beside you, his jaw now tense. He reaches over your shoulder and easily takes the book off the shelf, dropping it in your outstretched hand and staring at you in confusion.

_ “Tony?” _ He asks, incredulous.

“He’s literally  _ Iron Man,” _ you say. “He’s  _ everyone’s  _ favorite CEO.”

You head two genres over to the science fiction section, where the book actually belongs. Following you, Steve scoffs. “He’s not _ mine.” _

The book goes back in its proper spot, third shelf in the science fiction section, and you make your way back to the cash register to ring up Steve.

Hot-pink dust jacket. Unfortunately, you haven’t mustered up the courage to introduce him to  _ Twilight _ yet, despite it being the very  _ epitome  _ of trashy romance, the only genre that he ever reads. But you have mustered up the courage to do lots of other things.

As usual, Steve looks over the bottom row of bookmarks while you take your time counting up his change.You sneak a few glances at him when you can. It’s sunny today, sunlight streaming in through the windows, catching on bits of dust floating in the air and on the zipper of Steve’s jacket and on the shiny orange paint on his nails.

They’ve already chipped a little, especially at the thumbs, but they still look great. You hand him his change and receipt, and once he has it all safely tucked in his pocket, you reach out and grab his hands.

His eyebrows raise. He doesn’t resist.

You hold his hands over the counter,  _ extremely  _ unprofessional behavior that you shouldn’t be engaging in. You do it anyway. He’s warm and his hands are rough and familiar, and he looks so  _ good  _ today, sunlight illuminating strands of his beard reddish-brown, jacket unzipped to reveal his blue pullover fitting snugly over his chest, mouth caught up in a grin…

You’re looking at him and he’s looking at you and everything is better with the sun out. He’s ditched the sunglasses today, ironically enough, and the blue in his eyes is crystal, his eyelashes fluttering.

He pulls away first. You’re thankful for it, because you don’t know if you would have been able to.

There’s another cat bookmark on the free row, an orange tabby dressed in a suit and waistcoat. Steve picks it up and proudly shows it to you, holding it up like it’s a prize

Your hands are still out over the counter. Sheepishly, you pull them back. “Sorry.”

Steve slips the bookmark into the bag and wraps his hand around the handles. “Don’t be sorry.”

***

A woman, dressed to the nines in a  _ gorgeous  _ pantsuit and boots that look too expensive to be on this side of New York, proudly and unabashedly places the entire  _ 50 Shades of Grey _ trilogy on the counter.

Immediately, you launch into your spiel, asking if she found everything alright, engaging in loose small talk after she starts it, hunting for the barcode on the back of each book to scan. Steve, standing on the side of the counter, stares at the books with an expression you wish you could take a picture of.

The books all go neatly in a plastic bag. The woman swipes her credit card because the chip machine is broken. She keeps looking over at Steve, whose face is literally comical at this point, and you wonder if you should apologize on his behalf.

“Have you read any of these?” The woman asks as you put her receipt in the bag.

“All three,” you answer, solemnly and truthfully.

God, you wish that Steve wasn’t here right now.

She leans forward, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Were they…  _ good?” _

You nod emphatically. “Absolutely.”

Steve makes a noise in the back of his throat. You and the woman both turn to him, and he’s blushing bright pink, and you feel bad for him, just a little bit.

The woman turns back and takes her bag. You wish her well. When she’s opening the door, the heels of her boots clicking loudly in the  _ coolest  _ possible way, Steve takes her place.

“You’ve read all three?”

It seems so wrong to laugh, but you do it anyway. “Yes!”

Steve shakes his head. “Why?”

“They were pretty good! After the riding crop scene in book one, I  _ had  _ to get the second one, where he-”

He cuts you off. “I don’t get why you like that scene so much. It wasn’t even well written- it wasn’t even  _ good.” _

Your jaw drops. “You read it?”

He glares at you, indignant, but fighting to hold back a smile. “Only because I was bored! There was a mission, and I had to take a 17 hour flight-”

“Steven Grant Rogers, you dirty fucker.” 

You’re grinning so widely that your cheeks hurt. Captain America read _ 50 Shades of Grey  _ on a superhero  _ combat mission. _ Just, like, _ wow.  _ It sounds like something you would shitpost on Twitter after one too many glasses of boxed wine, not an actual  _ fact.  _ And you’re the one who sold it to him.

He finally cracks a smile. “I didn’t like it, though.”

You sigh. “Was it too adult for you?”

“I just thought that… their relationship was really unhealthy.”

The statement is  _ way  _ too serious to be a comment about erotic literature.

“That’s true,” you say, and for whatever reason, his smile vanishes and he’s completely stoic, borderline intimidating.

“What did you think about it?” He asks, posing the question like it’s your God-given duty as an American citizen to provide an answer.

“Um,” you say, uncertain because you don’t know what answer he’s looking for, “I agree with you? Their power dynamic is all messed up. He’s way more powerful than he is, which isn’t really good for a successful relationship.”

“And he’s way older than her too, right?” 

You pause, trying to remember that detail. “Only by six years, I think.”

Steve frowns. He rubs a hand along his beard, weirdly aggravated. “What if it was more?”

He sounds vulnerable, exposed. Then you realize that he’s not talking about the book at all, talking about something else,  _ you and him.  _

Every single word you’ve ever learned to speak suddenly vanishes. What are you even supposed to say? Do you keep up with the anecdote, or do you move out of it? Are you supposed to be reassuring? Nice? Is he asking for permission? 

“I…I don’t think that matters that much,” you stammer, “if they’re both adults.”

Steve looks away from you and at the ceiling. An extravagant light fixture stares down at him, glowing yellowish and faint.

“Okay,” he says.

“It’s not a big deal,” you say again, because for whatever reason you feel like he needs to hear you repeat yourself. “They had really good sex, anyways-”

“Help me find a book!” Steve interrupts,  _ finally  _ lightening up, giving a breathy laugh as he steps away from the counter and towards the maze of shelves. You follow, so glad that this topic has been addressed and promptly tucked away, no longer bothering him.

***

It’s snowing when you get off work.

Naturally, you’re elated. The first snowfall of the year marks the start of so many enjoyable winter activities- drinking hot chocolate and eggnog, decorating the storefront with red and green tinsel, wearing cute woolen hats with little pompoms sewed on top.

You dig your hat out of your backpack as you step outside and put it on. Standing underneath the awning, you’re still protected from the falling snow.

Steve, approaching you from across the street, is not. Even from a distance, you can see snowflakes dusting the shoulders of his jacket. You flash him a smile and he doesn’t return it.

It’s the first indicator that he’s having a bad day, where he’s tired and barely verbal and touchy. You’re excited to be with him, anyway. You have no problems with keeping up mindless chatter with yourself while he…  _ smolders,  _ or reflects, or whatever.

“Is it okay if we walk around for a little bit?” You ask, itching to enjoy the snow. It’s not too cold outside, and anyway, Steve runs warm and you can just walk a little closer to him if you feel a chill.

There’s snow gathering in his beard, shifting when he frowns. “Sure,” he says, and you’re off.

The silence that exists while you walk is different. Maybe it’s because you know more about him now than you did before. His discomfort and irritation is something you can imagine now, something you can actually  _ fathom, _ rather than being an abstract idea of superhero-level suffering. Of course, knowing the extent to which he could be suffering does absolutely  _ nothing  _ to help you figure out how to console him.

His fingers trail towards yours, finding your hand and wrapping tightly around it. You both wear gloves, minimizing the contact and somehow amplifying it, since he’s holding on tighter and the fabric grating against each other creates more friction.

The snow is glittery under streetlights, sadly turning to grey slush the second it hits the ground. A car drives past and its tires kick up the slush, nearly splattering on your and Steve’s shoes.

Steve curses.

It’s a noise so rude and bitter, so foreign, that you gasp.

“I  _ hate  _ winter,” he says, voice gruff, and then shoots a glance at you,  _ daring  _ you to object, or inviting you to meekly agree.

Well, fuck that. You’re not going to get  _ intimidated  _ into slandering your favorite season, even if Captain America wants you to.

“It’s not that bad,” you offer, keeping your voice steady. You might be a little freaked out, but you are  _ not  _ going to let it show.

His gaze darkens.

You jut your chin out at him.

A moment passes, overwrought with tension.

His shoulders slump. 

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you say mildly, adjusting your hat. You pause before continuing. “If you want to, like…  _ talk  _ about anything, I’m here.”

You’re expecting him to stay quiet. Sharing century-old war stories, but actively talking about current events is another. 

“I’m stressed out,” Steve says.

“Oh,” you say, surprised.

“There’s just,  _ so  _ much on my plate right now.”

You try not to slip over a chunk of sidewalk covered in melting snow, watery and easy to fall on. Steve steadies you, briskly putting his other hand on your shoulder and pulling it away just as fast. “I can imagine.”

“You can’t!” He says, suddenly loud. 

A few pedestrians around you turn to stare. You glare at all of them, even though you’re just as shaken up. Part of you wants to make an excuse and go home, because Steve is being unnecessarily rude.”

“Then tell me,” you say, keeping your tone comforting nonetheless. 

Steve sighs, drawing out his breath, either tired or exasperated.

You squeeze his hand once, letting both him and yourself know that everything’s fine.

He caves.

“I have to  _ worry  _ so much.”

He tells you, in a voice still too harsh for your liking, about everything that’s expected from him. He’s a role model and a public figure, always shown as a model citizen on top of being a superhero. He’s never had a real day off, and he’s not allowed to write his own speeches or media statements because everything he says has to perfectly fit his image.

He’s always expected to fight. And he can’t ever be upset about it, or scared, because he’s  _ Captain America _ and he’s always expected to win. And he doesn’t view autograph requests or fanart or getting a street named after him as a proper thank-you. He just wants to be thanked like a normal person, for solving problems that were never his to being with.

“And I’m always paranoid,” he adds, and you’re starting to go dizzy because holy hell his life sounds like it sucks. “Every time I do anything I always have to expect the worst.”

At this point, you don’t have any words. You just listen, quietly, and hope that there is something out there that’s good in his life. He desperately needs it.

“For example,” he continues, because an example of his misery is definitely something you need, “I sent Spi- our fucking intern to your store to see if you were mad at me, because I wouldn’t want to go back if you were.”

He throws it out and carries on with something about Thanos, which has somehow come out, but you’re stuck on the first part. All those months ago… An intern?

Peter, you remember, and the entire conversation you had with the kid comes back to you, and you’re seriously  _ screwed.  _ How much of it did he tell Steve? Does Steve think- does he  _ know  _ that you like him?

You’ve settled into your own panic, oblivious to Steve. A constant stream of  _ fuck fuck fuck  _ is running through your mind, echoing louder and louder. Steve knows you told him he was your favorite Avenger, but does he know beyond that?

When he pauses in his rant to take a breath, you bite. “What’s your, um… What all did the intern tell you? After he came to the store?”

Steve looks down at you, and momentarily you feel selfish. Compared to what he’s going through, your whole dilemma is inconsequential.

But he’s the one who brought it up, so he can deal with it.

“That you were fine,” he says. “And that you’re a Captain America fan.”

“That’s good,” you say, relieved. Cat’s not quite out of the bag yet.

But Steve continues! “You… admire me? And one time I gave a speech at your university, which you never told me you went to,” he gives you a hurt look, and you want to  _ scream, _ you thought you were over this, and there’s a much more  _ important  _ discussion going on, “and… that I'm your celebrity crush.”

Oh God.

_ Pull out your shield, Steve, _ you think.  _ Channel all of that angst into your vibranium frisbee and decimate me, please. _

You’ve stopped walking. You don’t even realize until Steve stops, too, and then you’re both loitering in the middle of the sidewalk while you try to fix your scrambled brain. What do you even say? How do you jump from talking about the harmful societal expectations of superheroes to talking about  _ feelings? _ Why can’t you just laugh it off and deny it?

“Um,” you start, blinking away the snow that gets in your eyes. “I don’t know what to say.”

His gaze softens, going from a stare that rivals the Winter Soldier’s to one that is more reminiscent of the Steve you’re friends with.

(The Steve you’re crushing on.)

It’s nearly dark. All of the streetlights have turned on. Steve turns to face you and the light flickers over his face, painting the divot between his eyebrows yellow-orange. He reaches for your other hand, your heart is beating so fast that it feels like it’s about to crack your ribs.

“Am I really?”

How can you lie to Captain America?

You try to duck your head away from him, suddenly feeling shy, and promptly bonk him in the chest. __

_ Woah, _ you’re close. 

Steve cracks a small smile. He’s finally starting to melt.

“You don’t have to put the celebrity part,” you say, and your blood is on fire, and your voice fucking _ cracks  _ at the end _ , _ and you seriousy hate everything and cannot wait to go home. “Just a crush.”

If Steve wasn’t gripping your hands so tight, you would faceplant right in the concrete and eat a mouthful of dirty snow. 

“Wow,” Steve says, and lifts his head up and laughs.

You can feel it in your bones.

He looks back down at you. You probably look like you’ve seen a ghost. In your gloves, your palms are slick with sweat. You just told Captain America you liked him, and if anything he’s pulling you closer and closer, and you can feel his chest ghosting against yours, and maybe you don’t hate everything, because he is very warm and the night is very beautiful, grey skies and swirling snow and illuminating streetlights.

There’s snowflakes caught in his eyelashes. You lean forward, until you can see them melting when he blinks, and then you close your own eyes and kiss him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i made reader a business student because i know three (3!) people who went into college undecided and not knowing wtf they wanted to do and ended up studying business. and i think it fits with the character. anyways steve got upset that reader didn't tell him stuff... he got orange nails... natasha and bucky are cool af... steve and reader finally k*ssed... thank god except not. next chapter is not gonna be a happy one if it goes how i wrote it in my head!!!  
> thank u all so much for your support!!! your sweet comments have me blushing like crazy!! feel free to let me know what you thought of this chapter!!


	6. apart, again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> steve ghosts you again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally a normal length chapter. 4k words not bad

You’re anticipating it to be  _ fantastic. _

Steve won’t kiss back right away, because even though everything was leading up to this moment, your movements were still abrupt. But then he  _ will, _ and you’ll see stars and with one hand he’ll cradle your cheek or the back of your neck, and with the other he’ll take your shoulder or the small of your back and plush you flush against him, and even in the snow, with snowflakes dusting over your skin and melting into little drops of water that run onto his face, you’ll be on _ fire. _

That doesn’t happen.

Steve’s lips are cold, even though the rest of him is running warm. You keep your lips against his for three, four, five whole seconds, _waiting._ You’re too tense to feel anything other than apprehension.

He doesn’t kiss back. No, his whole body just  _ stiffens. _

You frantically pull away, opening your eyes, trying to figure out what’s going on.

Steve is staring at you like you’ve slapped him.

Which is… just…  _ what did you just do? _

You stumble back, pulling your hands away from his. He doesn’t resist.

Everything was going fine, everything was literally pointing in this direction, right? He’s the one that started pulling you closer, the one that gave you that  _ look  _ and took your hands and how could all of that  _ not  _ lead into a kiss?

“Was that…” you start, and the words feel too clunky in your mouth, heat is creeping up the back of your neck, and you have to resist the urge to scrub your lips, “Was I not supposed to do that?”

You hate how upset you sound.

This is humiliating.

Steve struggles to come up with a response. It hurts to watch him, to watch the emotions flicker over his face, but you do it anyway. Already, you can see him closing up, brow furrowed and trying to verbalize a good excuse to leave, or maybe a reason why pre-kissing activities aren’t actually meant to lead to kissing.

_ “No,”  _ he says harshly- you feel too childish and juvenile thinking it, but he sounds  _ mean,  _ his voice rough and accusatory, and you’re back to how you started the evening.

“I’m sorry,” you say, and you press your palms against your temples, so frustrated with yourself and still not quite comprehending how it didn’t work out the way it should’ve, when it was all going _ right,  _ and you’re literally burning up in the cold and under his gaze, “but, like we-”

_ “You _ shouldn’t have done that,” he snaps, emphasizing the  _ you  _ at the beginning, like this is all something that _ you’ve _ been imagining and that  _ you’ve _ been initiating and pressing on him, but  _ he  _ fucking took your hands first, and now you kind of want to slap him.

Your stomach drops to your toes.

“Oh,” is all you can think to say.

All traces of a smile on his face have vanished, he’s taken a complete one-eighty, staring at you with an unfamiliar fury. He’s  _ angry  _ at you, all that bitterness he was directing towards the world now hurled completely at you. 

You want to cry. Or scream. Or argue further, except Steve looks like he’s about to turn away from you and make a grand, dramatic exit, already angling his shoulders away from you, just like he did the day when he got the mysterious text on his phone, so you do it first.

You spin on your heel and retrace your steps, going back the way you came from.

The other way would have been easier, since it’s closer to a subway station, but you can’t think clearly enough to realize it, stumbling all the way home in a confused daze-  _ what  _ just happened?

***

Steve was expecting it to be dream-like. When you would finally kiss him, his world would slow, his thoughts would come to a gradual, blissful standstill. He would stay focused and anchored in the moment, swept up in your loveliness. He would only be focused on your hands and face and mouth pressing hot against his- focused on you.

That didn’t happen.

When you kissed him, he found his thoughts  _ amplified, _ suddenly thinking about  _ everything,  _ about his life and emotions and new, unfamiliar insecurities that he had never given any time of day before. He was worried about where to put his hands, who all was watching him, if his beard was scratching too roughly on your skin, what your expectations were for his kissing abilities.

By the time the butterflies came, you were already pulling away.

And he couldn’t bring you back.  _ Can’t  _ bring you back.

He hasn’t kissed- hasn’t  _ been  _ kissed in over seventy years. He can barely remember what it feels like, only accompanied by a few hazy memories of looking in the mirror and finding his mouth smeared with red, pulling Peggy close to him in quiet moments or empty corridors.

There’s  _ nothing  _ within him to prepare him for what he’s supposed to do with you.

Steve is a man whose entire life is structured around plans. Plans for a super-soldier, plans to end a war, plans to fight against alien invasions and evil-robot invasions and countless other situations. It’s all carefully thought out, both when he has months to prepare and when he has half a second.

But it’s different around you.

You never expect anything from him. Everything with you is always easy sentences, harmless jokes and dimly lit evenings. All situations where he can throw the planning out, can  _ relax  _ and enjoy the moment. He can breathe.

The flirting and talking and touching is simple- he can go with whatever he’s feeling and every time it ends up being the right thing. It’s all active, conscious interaction. But _ kissing?  _ What does he even- how does he- is that something you can just  _ feel  _ your way through?

Maybe it is. He doesn’t know.

He knows that he likes you. You’ve always been pretty to him, at first in a detached way in the color of your eyes and the curve of your smile, and now it’s grown- he finds you _ gorgeous,  _ when you laugh too loud at something dumb you say or he does, when you duck your head low and grip your pen like a lifeline while doing your assignments.

He wishes so hard that when you kissed him, it felt like the rest of you, easy and carefree and  _ unweighted, _ not like a  _ task  _ that he had to complete, like another mountain of additional stress he never asked for.

***

You’re pissed.

The anger comes gradually. At first, when you play the moment over and over in your head,  _ not  _ because you’re a masochist but because you can’t bring yourself to think about anything else even when you  _ try,  _ all you can feel is confusion and painful embarrassment.

You kissed Captain America, expecting fireworks to light up the sky and for bald eagles to caw and for someone to start playing the national anthem in the background, yet all you got was silence and painful rejection. Captain America, after  _ months  _ of stares and hand-holding and little comments that verge on the edge of not-just-friends, who has been invading your thoughts more than you would ever like to admit,  _ rejected  _ you.

It hurts. 

A lot.

But a sense of confusion still lingers. You can’t figure it out. If he went and did all of these things with you for so long, why did he draw the line at a kiss? It wasn’t going to go further, you’re not bold enough for that, and even if you were you knew it wasn’t the right time. Maybe it would spark an awkward conversation (like you haven’t ever had one of those before), maybe would result in nothing more than shy smiles and charged stares.

You weren’t going to, like,  _ make out  _ with him, or something. You respect him and his boundaries too much to try something like that. There’s no rulebook for trying to start something romantic with superheroes, so you’ve always been navigating blind and slow. Doesn’t Steve know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t try anything he’s not comfortable with?

If he’s not okay with closed-mouth kissing, then he could have fucking _ told you.  _ You’re sure that parts of the experience must be a shock to him, since he probably hasn’t touched a woman since 1935, or maybe 1938, if you’re pushing it. And you’re not judging him for it.

Have you ever really judged him for anything beyond the superficial? Why did he have to be so  _ rude? _

Honestly, if he apologizes, gives you even a one-sentence explanation, you’ll be fine. Still so embarrassed that looking at him makes you want to stick your head in a pile of sand, but fine. 

(He’s been such a constant in your life lately, and even now you miss him.)

He just needs to say he’s sorry, and you’ll say that you’re sorry too, again, and you’ll be happy to pretend like everything is normal and the kiss never happened.

But, of course, things like this are  _ never  _ neatly resolved.

You wait an entire week, half-ass all of your assignments because you’re too preoccupied in your thoughts, work your shifts at the bookstore in agony because you’re constantly anticipating him to walk inside, and you receive absolutely  _ nothing. _ Total silence from Steve’s end, not even a  _ text. _

You wait another week because you want to think he deserves it and you’re falling into desperation for him to redeem himself, because the thought of having ruined everything with him makes your stomach churn and your eyes sting, and you wait and wait and don’t receive  _ one thing- _

Again, you’re pissed.

At the end of the second week, you come home from work and tiredly pull your gloves off, unreasonably weary as you take off your hat and coat and shoes.

You head straight to your closet and change into pajama pants and an old sweater, wash your face and put on a fresh pair of fuzzy socks. You leave your phone on your nightstand and rearrange the pillows on your bed, boil water on your stovetop and cook a sad packet of ramen.

The entire time, you’re trying to talk yourself out of it. You _ shouldn’t  _ do it- it’ll hurt you even more and make you angrier. It’ll be even more _ mortifying. _

When your ramen cools off you pour it into a bowl and trudge back to your bed. You sprawl out over your flimsy mattress, back propped up by all the pillows you fixed and feeling some semblance of security underneath the weight of all the blankets. You reach for your phone on your nightstand and try to not to wince at its stupid, ugly case, and unlock it and prepare for the worst.

Eating ramen in bed on a Wednesday night is depressing. Eating ramen in bed on a Wednesday night while going to your text messages and clicking on Steve’s contact is beyond depressing- it’s _ pitiful. _

You do it anyways.

As you twirl noodles around your fork, you scroll through the recent texts, most of which is a nonsensical stream of emojis after you activated the emoji keyboard on Steve’s phone.

The memory of him grinning like a dork and you rolling your eyes and smiling anyway as he scrolled through the pages of emojis hurts too bad, so you shove the forkful of ramen in your mouth and try to chew the pain away.

Steve sent you his top-five emojis in his last text, after you sent him yours. A smiley face, a cake, a sun, a dog, and a cat.

The cat emoji sends your anger reeling. Is the Steve who’s been ghosting you the last few weeks the same Steve who has the same taste as you in emojis?

You place your fork back in the bowl and tap out a text. 

You read it over and delete the entire thing, and then you type something else out and delete that, too, and repeat the process two more times before coming up with something that doesn’t sound too accusatory or embarrassing, which ends up being the most basic message ever.

_**hi.** _

You hit send.

You hate yourself immediately.

Eventually, you compose yourself enough to actually ask something significant, even though, again, it takes too many tries.

**_can we talk about what happened?_ **

**_i’m sorry._ **

You hit send on the last message without thinking, and you regret sending it too much so much that you turn off your phone and fling it on the nightstand, screen-side up so that you’ll know if he responds. Your stomach is turning over and over, but you pick up your ramen anyway, sadly eating in silence and trying to ignore how undone you really are.

***

Steve receives your texts a few hours before boarding the quinjet, but he doesn’t check his phone until he’s thousands of feet up in the air with no cell service, so he can’t respond to your texts, even if he wanted to.

Does he want to  _ talk  _ about what happened?

He’s already halfway to a mess when he’s around you. Talking about it would destroy him completely.

Somewhere, in the small sliver of his mind that lets him think about things that aren’t Avengers-related, he knows that that wouldn’t actually happen. Things like that don’t happen with you, except it did with the kiss, and now it’s all contradictory and he’s doubting your personality completely, wondering if he even knows how you are, and his head hurts and the jet turbulence is horrible and  _ none  _ of this makes sense.

He feels guilty. There’s no way that you’ve- you feel-

There’s no way that you’ve been able to develop a  _ crush  _ on him while knowing how complicated things are for him.

You don’t know.

He can’t kiss you in the middle of a street while it’s snowing, because he doesn’t really remember how to kiss, and a kiss implies the start of a real relationship, and he doesn’t know how to be in one of those in this era, either. He’s at a total loss for  _ everything  _ and you want to  _ talk  _ about it, like it wouldn’t entail admitting vulnerabilities that are  _ sad  _ and  _ embarrassing, _ like talking about it will somehow grant him the ability to know how to treat you the way you’re supposed to be.

It’s all fucked. 

And you’re  _ sorry  _ about it.

What are you apologizing for? For kissing him? For liking him? For not reaching out sooner, which he should have done, which is another responsibility on his shoulders? Or just for this entire situation, for developing feelings for him and then  _ telling  _ him about it, like he’ll know what to do with them?

_ He’s  _ the sorry one. It’s stupid and selfish and unbelievably rude of him to have expected so much from you. He’s the one who brought it up. Maybe things would be better if he just left you as the cashier, went to a different bookstore, didn’t engage in so many jokes about sex-books and technology and didn’t hold your hand-

But he likes you. Can he give that up? He doesn't know if he would be able to.

(He doesn’t  _ want  _ to.)

Steve keeps staring at his phone screen and ignores the looks his teammates are giving him, especially Natasha, who probably already knows that something has gone wrong. She probably knows you just as well as he does, just from one encounter, because she’s smart and inquisitive and he is so unbearably  _ stupid. _

At some point the quinjet lands, touching down in a nondescript part of eastern Europe, where something that’s suspiciously similar to a HYDRA plan is waiting to be busted. Business as usual.

He leans forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his legs, ignoring Natasha’s concerned stare, as he tries to condense all his thoughts into a text message, now that he’s on the ground and has cell service, covered by the exorbitantly expensive international data plan that SHIELD pays for him to have, although he’s never had a reason to use it until now.

But how does he say anything? Every word that he types out doesn’t look right, like he’s spelling them wrong. He tries a few times, except there is really no words out there that he could string together to make his thoughts less of a mess, so eventually he gives up and slides his phone back in his pocket.

Briefly, he entertains the idea of meeting you in person when this mission is over, and over cups of coffee he’ll try to explain things to you. Maybe this mission will end up being a long one, and he’ll have enough time to organize his thoughts into making at least a little bit of sense.

***

The next morning, while still half-asleep, you wonder if those texts you sent were just part of a dream. The memory is hazy enough, buried at the edges and all of the specifics forgotten, and even when you think about it, you can’t quite remember what you sent, only the choking feeling of self-inflicted embarrassment.

_ Please  _ let it all be a dream.

You pause while getting dressed, shirt only halfway buttoned, and reach for your phone. You’re sure that it was a dream. Would you really send texts like that to Steve? You’re at the age where you make stupid life decisions, but this is  _ too  _ stupid, even for you.

You open up your text messages and there, in all of their bubbled glory, are the three texts you definitely  _ did  _ send. 

Underneath the last text is a read receipt, dating back to nearly seven hours ago.

This fucker has left you on read for the past seven hours.

Maybe he’s busy. He’s Captain America, after all. There’s way more pressing matters out there for him to attend to, things that are actually  _ important- _

But this is important to  _ you. _ You’re _ normal. _ Your normal-ness is the most obvious thing about you. Things like this are part of your life, even if they’re not his, but you’re always so  _ accommodating  _ for him, and he could be the same way for you just  _ once, _ he could have sent at least a one-word response, could have said  _ No  _ or  _ Stop _ or  _ Blocked, _ but of course, Captain America is  _ old  _ and oh-so  _ burdened  _ with his Avenger life, so why would he have the time to respond to you?

You’re only just, like, his  _ friend.  _ But he already has  _ plenty  _ of those, and now that you’re thinking about it, he has plenty of women in his life, too, that he respects and treats decently, like the memory of his mother and Natasha and that other new Avenger, the Witch girl. So really, it’s all in you, you’re the one that somehow motivated him to treat you like this, but you’ve always considered yourself to be a really  _ nice  _ person, so  _ what did you do,  _ and everything is just-

Your throat catches in a wave of emotions, from upset to flustered and everything in between. You’re angry, but you can’t tell if it’s directed at yourself or at Steve or at everything in general, and God you really want to throw your phone at the wall, but that would be another irresponsible action, so you settle for throwing it back onto your bed with less fury than you would have liked.

With hands that are starting to shake, you finish buttoning up your shirt. The fabric is pale orange and one of your best thrift store finds, with buttons made of shiny, pearl-like plastic, and little birds embroidered in blue thread on the collar. It’s  _ nice, _ and too fancy to wear to just a few university lectures, but the orange looks good against your skin, and wearing it makes you feel marginally better.

_ Fuck boys,  _ you think, as you try to go through your morning with other tasks that are also meant to make you feel marginally better.

You spread strawberry jelly and start a pot of (sadly cheap) coffee and warm up milk in your favorite mug to make a low-budget cup of cafe au lait. Your work clothes are folded neatly, rather than just shoved, into your backpack, along with your laptop charger that you always forget and gripe about later, and the newest romance novel that you’re reading. This time, you are  _ not  _ going to shy away from the genre, even if you’ve come to think of it as Steve’s genre, even if your romantic pursuit is exactly what has you feeling so low. 

Regretfully, you retrieve your phone and slide it into the side pocket of your backpack, deciding to keep your Captain America phone case on it, as a reminder that you are  _ not  _ going to beat yourself up over this.

Steve obviously isn’t, since he’s quite content to just ignore everything, and you’re going to do the same. You had your own life without him, and now that you’ve moped enough over it, embarrassed yourself and sent your self-worth plummeting, you’re going to turn around and restart.  _ Fuck _ Steve, and his stupid superhero identity, and his stupid hair and beard and thoughtfulness and smile that always makes your head spin.Your strawberry toast is  _ delicious,  _ and you look really pretty today, and you’re going to be just fine.

***

It turns out, even if you  _ didn’t  _ have the resolve to move on with your life, you wouldn’t have had the time to keep on moping.

Finals are coming closer and closer and your coursework doubles, and you spend every evening reading and writing and typing. The bookstore is busier than ever, too, and even during slow hours you’re busy printing out receipts and bagging books and trying to help people find something to read. In the span of a few weeks, Steve is pushed back further and further into your mind, all the way to the point where he’s threatening to fall out.

You wouldn’t mind, if he did. 

Even in spare moments, when you’re picking at your nails or sitting on the subway or stocking a bookshelf, you’re pointedly  _ not  _ thinking about him. Instead, you think about things that actually  _ matter,  _ like schoolwork and whether your landlord allows you to keep pets and what sad meal you’re going to eat for dinner. 

As you step into the hallway on your floor, heading towards your apartment, you’re wondering if you have enough money to order something online, but your thoughts are cut off by the sight of someone standing outside of your door.

The  _ someone  _ is  _ Natasha.  _

She leans against your door, one hand in the pocket of her leather jacket, the other swiping at something on her phone, as scary as ever.

You falter, nearly dropping your keys. Briefly, you entertain the idea of retreating back into the stairwell and going as far away from her as you can possibly get, but then she looks up and straight  _ into  _ you, not just at you, and with some unknown force propelling you, you walk towards her.

She doesn’t smile as you get closer. Her eyes scan over your entire body once, the action sharp and calculating.

“Hi!” You say, smiling more widely than what’s probably appropriate, since this is _ Steve’s  _ friend, and she probably knows about some awful deed you did to make him reject you that even  _ you  _ are unaware of, and she’s definitely not here to be nice. “How are you?”

Your tone is at least cheerful enough to mask your discomfort. Natasha pulls off the wall, straightening her shoulders. She’s just as pretty as you remembered, but her hair is frizzy and there’s bags under her eyes and her shirt is only haphazardly tucked in, which could pass off as a lazy French tuck, but she doesn’t strike you as the type of person to only do things halfway.

All in all, she looks like something  _ happened  _ to her.

Her mouth is grim as she looks at you, slipping her phone back into her pocket. You feel like you might need to do the same with your keys.

“I’m good,” she says without even an ounce of conviction, and you know that she is most definitely not. She hesitates for a second, biting her lip, before asking, “How are you?”

The words sound so foreign in her mouth that you almost laugh.

“I’m great!” You say, sounding even  _ more  _ cheerful, at this point you’re using your tone as a defense mechanism, and you try to come up with another question to ask her. “Do… Do you want to come in?”

Her eyes narrow. You’ve offended her somehow, you think, and now Black Widow is going to hurt you in the most stylish and kickass way possible, and you’ll  _ thank  _ her for it, because, of course, it’s  _ Black Widow- _

“No.” She hesitates again, and her fingers tug at the zippers on her jacket. “I like your sweater.”

You look down at your sweater, exposed after you unzipped your coat in the stairwell, and stare at the fabric for a few seconds, trying to remember what she even said. She likes your sweater, you recall, she  _ complimented  _ you.  _ Black Widow  _ gave you a  _ compliment.  _ She likes your bright blue, v-neck sweater, another top that makes you feel like you look nice when you wear it, and she  _ complimented  _ you, and you could hug her, if she wasn’t being so foreboding and cold.

Also, Black Widow just  _ complimented  _ you. Did you mention that?

“Thanks,” you say dumbly, brushing off a stray piece of lint on the wool. 

Natasha shifts, suddenly impatient, even though she’s the one that’s been dragging this out. “I need to take you somewhere.”

“Where?” You ask, looking back up at her. She rolls her eyes.

“Steve wants to see you.”

Okay,  _ what the fuck? _

You knew that this had to do with Steve. The- the absolute  _ fuckwad,  _ who you haven’t even thought about in what feels like _ eternities, _ somehow managed to send one of his friends to come  _ fetch  _ you for him.

“Then  _ he  _ can come here,” you say brightly, feeling like you’re now dealing with an unreasonable customer, like the man who came in last week and complained loudly about your limited magazine section, as if he hadn’t come into a  _ bookstore.  _ Natasha is giving you the same darkening look as he did, too, as if  _ you’re _ the stupid one in this situation.

She sighs, clearly irritated. “If he could, then do you think I would be wasting my time here?”

You pause at that. “Why can’t he?”

You don’t know why you ask. It’s not like you  _ want  _ to see him, since if you did you would probably start yelling at him, or cry a few frustrated tears, or just ignore him completely. But Natasha is so _ indignant,  _ and coupled with how disheveled she looks, and how uncharacteristically nice she was to you at first, you just  _ know  _ that something is wrong.

She pauses.

“He’s… he’s not in very good shape,” she says, voice like thin ice as she gauges your reaction.

Just like the rest of this interaction, you have no idea what you’re supposed to do.You gape at her for longer than you would like before finally,  _ finally  _ coming to your senses.

“Oh.”

It’s the only response you can coherently string together.

Natasha sighs again and takes a step towards you. 

She’s closer, and under the awful lighting of your apartment’s hallway, she looks like she’s in even worse shape, her eyes bloodshot. You haven’t been keeping up with the news- has something big happened recently?

You’re suddenly worried. It’s the worry that takes control of your mouth. “Okay,” you say, and it’s also the worry that has you following her back down the stairwell, has you zipping up your coat against the cold and going with her to wherever the hell Steve is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> his is going to be SUCH a shallow conflict it's literally going to be completely resolved in the next chapter lol so don't worry! i got some fluff planned, and i might be introducing tony!! we will see :) kudos and comments are always appreciated!!


	7. daisies and nicknames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yall argue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was really going thru it in my personal life while writing this... this ended up not being the strongest chapter BUT it sets things up for where i want to go with the next chapter so it works well enough.  
> i really didn't want to discount the reader's anger because it was justified, but obviously it did need to be resolved. hopefully it turned out okay.

Steve’s arm is in a cast.

His left arm is in a fucking cast, and you know that for him to be so seriously injured, an entire _building_ must have fallen on the limb, and now he’s sitting in a ridiculously undersized hospital bed, scratchy hospital blanket tucked around his legs, hooked up to machines that you don’t know the purpose of. Thick white bandages peek out from the neckline of his flimsy hospital gown, bruises pepper his skin anywhere you look. He stares at you, where you stand next to Natasha in the doorway, with hauntingly sad blue eyes. He looks _pathetic._

“Fuck you,” you blurt out.

Natasha lets out a surprised laugh, quickly trying to smother it with a cough. Steve flinches, hurt.

Well, whatever. He can’t text you back, but has no problem in calling you over when he’s suddenly gravely injured, and, just… you immediately feel bad for him, but you’re so fucking _pissed_ that it doesn’t matter.

You take a step into the hospital room. Despite being located in what Natasha informed you is the  _ Avengers Compound, _ it’s no nicer than any other you’ve seen. The pain is a little crisper, and the machines surrounding him all look new, but it's still a hospital room and ultimately depressing.

“What the fuck, Steve,” you say, making sure you don’t phrase it as a question so that he can’t try to redeem himself with his response.

Behind you, Natasha quietly slips away, shutting the door behind her.

It’s just you and him. He opens his mouth, preparing to give an answer to your non-question, and you can see the yellow of a fading bruise on his cheek, but still,  _ still,  _ you persist. You close your eyes, gathering your thoughts, trying to formulate the mess in your mind into coherent sentences. 

You begin your tirade.

Starting with shaking hands, and the inevitable stuttering. 

“You’re- you- you are making  _ dick move  _ right now _.  _ Who the fuck do you think you are?”

He’s silent.

It’s good that he’s silent, because you have shit to say and you’re going to say it, even if he’s injured and he’s a superhero and you’re just the civilian who’s somehow been granted the displeasure of his presence. You are going to _ say your shit.  _

“Let me get this straight. I _kiss_ you, and for some reason you freak the fuck out and _ghost_ me? And then when I try to figure out what happened, you leave me on read? And then, after not hearing from you for weeks, you break your arm, or something, and suddenly you want to fucking _see me?”_

You take a deep breath, stepping further into the room. “Let me reiterate,” you say, pulling out your formal vocabulary because that’s how angry you are, “what the  _ fuck.” _

He just stares at you. It stings, his gaze fucking  _ stings _ and you suddenly feel skinned raw, open and exposed and more vulnerable than Steve deserves to see you be. You keep on walking until you reach the row of chairs pushed against the opposite wall, sinking into the one furthest from him and putting your head in your hands.

“I’m sorry,” he says roughly, the first of his voice you;ve heard in what feels like forever. It’s like you’ve just been drenched in ice water, chilled to the very bone. You hate it. 

You look up from your hands and right at him. “You literally could have texted me that.”

“I-”

“You can’t just apologize because I’m here now and it’s become  _ convenient  _ for you!”

You’re up again, starting to pace the length of the small room, receiving stares from people who you think are nurses peering in through the gaps in the blinds. As you try to figure out what to say next, you glare at them.

“You can’t do that,” you say, remembering in the back of your mind that Steve doesn’t like it when you talk loudly, but you talk loudly anyways. “That’s not fucking fair. You just… you can’t... ugh- you literally _forgot_ about me.”

Steve starts to say something, and again, you cut him off.

“I get it.” You stop your pacing at the foot of the bed, standing a good distance away from him, unable to bring yourself any nearer. “I’m not, like… I’m _ normal. _ And I probably am pretty forgettable, like, compared with the rest of the stuff going on in your life, but after everything- Steve, I don’t know if you remember this, but _ you _ were the one who flirted first- after  _ everything, _ you didn’t have to be so… like… why were you so mean to me?”

There. You really showed him! Except at the end, your voice cracks, and your eyelids are suddenly burning, or have they been burning since you first walked in? 

Furiously, you blink, getting rid of all the tears except one. It spills down your cheek.

You wipe the salt away with the back of your hand and hope that Steve didn’t see it.

It’s completely silent, save for the humming of the machines and your breathing. Slowly, with great hesitation, you bring yourself to look at him.

He doesn’t look as hurt or offended as you were wanting him to be. This is the angriest you’ve ever been at him, or maybe just the angriest you’ve ever been in general, and he’s barely reacting to it. You’re so far off and detached from your regular self that you’re practically another person altogether, standing across from him, glaring at him with a ferocity even you didn’t know that you possessed, and it’s all foreign and unknown both to you and him, and he just-

He just looks sad.

His eyebrows draw together as you head back to the chair you sat in. Only now do you remember that you’re still wearing your backpack, and your coat is still zipped all the way to your chin.

Steve slowly inhales. You busy yourself with talking your shit off and trying not to regret yelling so much.

“I didn’t forget you,” Steve says, so quietly that you nearly miss it.

“Really,” you scoff,  _ “really? _ Well, Steve, it definitely did  _ not  _ fucking read that way-”

“I like you too much,” he says, and you nearly fall out of your chair.

You’re still angry to no limits, but you’ve never heard Steve sound so  _ desperate _ before.

Stunned, you listen, unable to form any sentence to combat his words.

“I- you made me really nervous,” he admits, saying it like he doesn’t sound like a total fucking idiot. 

The spell breaks. You roll your eyes.

“Yeah, that’s what  _ happens  _ when you have a crush on someone-”

“How would I know that?”

Steve leans forward in his shitty hospital bed, back propped up by his shitty hospital pillows. He winces as he tries to move… closer to _ you,  _ pain flickering over his face, and it’s too much. You get up, again, and move to the chair closest to him, landing in it with a grand sigh.

He says your name softly. You don’t know if you want to deck him or yourself or the wall.

“I haven’t… I haven’t kissed someone in over seventy years. I don’t even remember what it feels like,” he says, still looking at you with all of that _ intensity.  _ The back of your neck falls cold. 

“Why didn’t you tell me that when you were taking my hands and pulling me close to you and giving me that _look,_ Steven?”

Wait, fuck, you shouldn’t have said that-

Saying his whole name is a slip-up you always use it when you’re joking around, Steve better  _ not _ be thinking that you’re joking around-

“Everything is always better around you,” he says.

You’re stunned again.

“You make me feel...  _ light. _ Your jokes and the books and whenever we hang out- you’re wonderful. I never have to think around you. I feel normal around you. You…” He pauses, and his gaze drops from your eyes to your hands, draped over the armrests of the chair.

“I like you. Why would you think that I forgot you? You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in this  _ century.” _

Your resolve is starting to crack, piece by piece.

Steve continues. “It’s just, when, um, that _thing_ happened, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what you… expected from me. And that’s embarrassing, isn’t it? I don’t even know how to give the girl I’m crushing on a kiss. And,” he sighs, and you trying too hard to keep it together, and maybe he is too, with how shaky his voice is becoming.

“And it’s not a valid excuse. I reacted awfully. I’m sorry. I should have texted you back. I should have told you beforehand. I just- I always  _ have  _ to do the right thing, but I didn’t even know what that was, in that situation. I didn’t want to mess anything up. Which still happened.”

The tears you had blinked away earlier are collecting in your eyelashes. There’s a lump gathering in your throat. 

(You don’t want to, but you understand.)

“I don’t know what to say,” you whisper, because your throat feels raw and talking normally will make you sound as destroyed as you feel.

Steve nods. You watch him in the corner of your eye. “You don’t have to forgive me.”

You laugh, and goddamn it, a few tears  _ do _ spill, sliding over your cheeks down to the corners of your mouth. 

“I know that,” you say, “I  _ don’t _ forgive you.”

You’re full-on crying now, and you hesitantly scoot your chair closer to his bedside. His good arm is close to you, but you don’t take his hand. “We have a serious communication problem.”

“We’ll work on it.”

And that’s that.

You wipe your eyes with the sleeve of your sweater, fully aware that you probably look like a mess. Steve watches you. You sniffle. He reaches for something on the small table next to his bed.

A book. The one he bought on his last visit, you realize. He flips through the pages with one hand, stopping when he finds something squashed between pages 101 and 102. 

Gingerly, he pulls it out, and you can do nothing but gape. 

It’s the fucking  _ diner napkin.  _ He kept his  _ diner napkin, _ the one with his atrocious portrait and your phone number scribbled in the corner. It’s still neat, too, not riddled with stains or crumpled up the way yours probably is at the bottom of your backpack.

(Or did you take yours and hang it on your fridge? You don’t remember, but that’s not important.)

“Oh my god,” you say, and you might be crying harder, but you can’t really tell because you’re too overwhelmed, “Steve.”

He gives you a small smile.

He’s too good at this. You’re still mad, you think, but just- how can you  _ not  _ smile back, this man kept his stupid napkin, and he’s so old and nervous and you really, really like him, the feelings never really went away even though you willed them to be smaller and smaller to hurt you less, and you know your anger is fully justified, and if you have to feel any more emotions on top of this clusterfuck, you’ll completely  _ break down,  _ but you’re going to try to start things up again anyways.

“You’re amazing,” you say, and surprise yourself because you mean it.

Steve frowns. _ “You’re  _ amazing.”

You shake your head. “I don’t have an eight-pack.”

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t know how to kiss you.”

“I’ll teach you.”

“...I-”

“Not right now! Just, like, whenever you want to. If you want to. One day.”

“Okay.”

***

When Steve invites you to his place, one of the upper floors of, again, the  _ Avengers Compound _ , you foolishly accept without thinking. Only after do you realize that it is a  _ terrible _ idea- you’ve just had an argument with him, you’ve cried in front of him and he’s spelled out his feelings and you’ve both admitted that your relationship has a serious flaw- what you really need is some space. 

But you’re longing for a normal routine again, a life where he’s a regular fixture, so you said yes. Even though, as the elevator doors slide open and you step into the Avengers’ living room, you feel more out of your normal routine than you’ve ever been. 

Everything in here looks expensive. The leather couches, the pretentious abstract art framed on the walls, the enormous glass coffee table. Even the inside-out pair of socks strewn on the floor look like they belong to a world of money. If you were a kleptomaniac, you would be ecstatic.

And there, sitting on one of the couches, wearing an uncharacteristically loose t-shirt, is Steve.

He stands up when he sees you, wincing only slightly. His arm is still in a cast, but he already looks better since the last time you saw him, his bruises fading and his hair loosely combed away from his face. You approach him and quickly hide your hands behind your back.

“Hi,” he says, and even his voice is better, no longer rough or overly broken.

“Hi,” you say, and feel so fucking  _ awkward.  _

It’s an excess of awkwardness, pooling at your feet and tying on your ankles like ropes. What are you supposed to say? How do you start a post-argument/one-sided-rant conversation?

You settle for just flashing him a smile. 

Steve smiles back. 

It does the trick, and overwhelms you- you have to start  _ manually breathing. _

You’ve never swooned in your life, but you might swoon right now. His smile is, as always, radiant, and his eyes crease at the corners, and he is wearing _ sweatpants  _ and _ fuzzy socks, _ and good grief, the Lord is  _ testing  _ you today.

You could jump his bones.

(For obvious reasons, you don’t.)

“How are you feeling?” You ask, hands still behind your back.

Steve sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It then looks adorably disheveled, and you hate yourself for coming up with a thought like that. 

“Better,” he says. “Only the cast is left.”   
“Has anybody signed it?” You joke, shifting your hands so that Steve can’t see what you’re hiding.

He stares at you blankly. “My cast?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

Steve gives you a weird look, like what you’ve just said is completely inconceivable. “That’s a thing?”

Of course, Grandpa doesn’t know that signing casts are a thing. 

“It’s mostly a thing kids do,” you explain, “To make them feel better about having to wear a cast? I was just, like, making a joke.”

“Oh.” 

He gives you a once-over, still completely confused. His eyes catch on your arms. “What’s behind your back?”

Your smile fades and now you’re nervous, too nervous.

Steve watches as you bring your hands back in front, clutching your bright, albeit small bouquet, wrapped in crinkly plastic and hastily tied with a purple ribbon. 

You hold it out for him to take. It’s for him, because he was in the hospital. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Get him a card or balloons or flowers, except you wouldn’t know what to write in a card, and balloons seem inappropriate for the situation, but flowers are pretty and well-intentioned, and you _ remembered. _

He takes the bouquet from you, holding it with both hands but mostly with the right one. 

Again, you’re struck by how large his hands are, but now they look impossibly tender as they cradle the flowers, as he consciously tries not to crush the stems. You fiddle with your now-free hands, uncomfortable in this extremely affluent setting, cheeks flaring in a blush as you watch the realization play over his face.

The story he told you so long ago- the one about getting yellow daisies for his mom. You remembered, and brought him an entire bouquet of them.

The process was cumbersome. You stuttered like an idiot when giving your request to the florist, and accidentally crushed a flower underneath your shoe, and had to look away from the screen when your total came up, because apparently flowers that grow like  _ weeds  _ in the Midwest are  _ horribly _ expensive in New York, and you paid the entire thing anyway and the entire trip was  _ completely  _ worth it, because the look on Steve’s face is everything.

He’s… are his eyes watering?

You have the sudden fear that you’ve overstepped.

“I got them for you, because of, like… you were in the hospital,” you start, stumbling over your words while Steve gently skims a finger over the tops of the petals, “and you told me that thing about your mom, so I chose daisies, and, um… I hope you like them.” 

He holds the bouquet and drops his fingers from the flowers to the ribbon, tugging on one end until the uneven bow straightens out.

You wait for his response.

“You remembered that?” 

His voice is like gravel. He takes a step closer to you.

“Of course I did” you say, and he shifts the bouquet into the crook of his arm, both of his hands now free. “It was important to you, so I-“

The words are stolen right out of you as Steve presses his right hand against your face.

You’re suddenly immobile, feet glued to the fancy hardwood floor. You forget how to breathe, forget how to think, are suddenly self-conscious of the state of your hair and the overall blandness of your outfit today, your sweater with its yarn starting to pill, your exhausted shoulders sagging against it. 

But his touch is gentle, hands calloused, pinkie tucked underneath your jaw and tickling your ear, thumb close to your mouth, the rest of his fingers splayed out across your cheek, one of them nearly ghosting over your lower eyelid. His pinky slides over, coming to rest in the dip between your two lips at its very edge. He’s  _ cradling _ your face, you realize, and looking at you with a gaze so tender you could weep, and his face is so  _ close- _

Steve ducks his head down to meet yours and your life flashes before your eyes and he kisses your cheek. 

Oh. 

_ Oh. _

His lips are feather-light against your cheek, so chaste that you can barely feel it, until you tilt your head further towards his to heighten the contact. 

His beard scrapes against your skin.

His eyes flutter shut, his lips press harder. 

You’re  _ dizzy _ with elation. 

Steve pulls away too soon, with his hand on your cheek and his flowers still tucked in the crook of his arm. He looks at you, shyly, eyes blazing and uncertain and mouth lopsided, twisted like it wants to smile but isn’t sure if doing so is appropriate for the occasion. 

You can’t do anything but smile. 

It’s just a kiss to the cheek, but he has set you  _ alight.  _

Like it had from the petals to the ribbon, Steve trails his hand from your cheek to your hand. With a confidence you haven’t ever seen before, he drags his fingers languidly, taking his sweet time, over the side of your bare neck and down your arm and stalling on your wrist, before grabbing your hand. His fingers weave their way with yours and he turns you around with him.

The intensity of the moment, the  _ fervor _ of the moment slips away as he pulls you along, starting at his ridiculous superhero pace and hopelessly dragging you behind him. 

“Where are we going?” You ask, voice a half-gasp as you struggle to keep up with him, and struggle to regain your senses. 

“To find a marker,” he says, tone dead-serious.

“What do we need a  _ marker _ for?” 

“What else are you going to sign my cast with?”

Steve leads you through posh hallways you don’t take the time to marvel at or appreciate, his hold on your hand unrelenting and the only thing you can focus on. 

***

You’re sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, pretending to be more adult than you feel and having a serious discussion with Steve about the expectations you both have for your developing relationship, as part of your collective effort to communicate more. While Steve runs through his thoughts, he ambles over to the stainless steel refrigerator, opens it with ease now that his cast is off, and starts pulling out fruit.

“I’m in the mood for a smoothie,” he says, and then goes back to telling you that you’ll have to be patient with him, because time has rendered him romantically inept, and he wants to go forward, but he’ll be going slowly.

You’re about to say that  _ of course _ you’ll be patient. You know him well enough by now to know that. The words are on the tip of your tongue, and Steve is stacking cartons of berries on the counter next to the fridge, when Tony Stark walks in.

Tony  _ motherfucking _ Stark, wearing designer jeans (Balmains?) and a black tank top, with his arc reactor proudly glowing blue from his chest, walks into the kitchen.

_ You are now in the same room as Tony Stark. _

You don’t respond to Steve, you’ve forgotten how. Tony Stark is sauntering past him, the two of them exchange a wordless, impossibly cool nod, and then Tony Stark is sauntering towards you.

He stops when he’s across from you and places both hands on the expensive granite countertop of the island. There’s grease smeared in his knuckles and he’s staring at you and he, too, has  _ amazing  _ hair, and an amazing, painstakingly sculpted beard, and you’re so busy gawking like an idiot that your ongoing conversation with Steve falls to the very back of your mind.

“I know you,” Tony Stark says.

Even though he’s right there, it takes a minute for you to realize that he’s talking to you.

He knows you? That’s impossible, except, well,  _ not-  _ Natasha knows you, Bucky knows you, the intern knows you, everyone immediately in Steve’s life seems to know you. You don’t know if it’s because they’ve done a background check on you or if because Steve talks about you, but both options are flattering, and the thought of Tony Stark knowing who you are is  _ extremely  _ flattering. After all, he’s  _ Tony Stark. _

“I know you too,” you say, as if he isn’t the most recognizable man on the planet.

Tony Stark tilts his head to the side. Behind him, now washing his small mountain of fruit, Steve gives you a curious look.

“You do?” Tony Stark asks, so obviously humoring you.

“You’re my favorite Fortune 500 CEO,” you blurt out, and then regret your entire existence.

The corner of his mouth twitches.

“Of course I am,” he says. “But you can call me Tony.”

_ Tony _ finally breaks eye contact. He pulls away from the island and heads to what you think is a pantry. Only after he’s disappeared do you remember how to think.

Tony Stark is letting you call him  _ Tony. _ Somehow, even though you’re embarrassingly awestruck, you can wrap your mind around the idea.

Steve- the fucker- is  _ laughing  _ as he rinses a carton of blueberries. You direct your attention away from the billionaire rummaging through the pantry and back at him. He gives you a little shrug, amused at you embarrassing yourself in front of yet another Avenger. You glare.

“You’re  _ very  _ charming,” he says, and you’re about to bite back at him, maybe pull out one of your trusty Grandpa jokes, when Tony reappears with a family-size package of Oreos.

He’s back at his spot, standing across from where you sit. “You’re the bookstore girl,” he says, like that’s your one defining character trait. 

“I- yeah. I mean, yes. I… work at a bookstore.”

You’re floundering. Tony remains impassive, he’s probably used to this. Steve, in the background, is laughing harder, only for you to see.

“What are you doing here?” He keeps his eyes on you, intense and calculating and probably doing quadruple-digit long division in his head while twisting his hand inside of the package, reaching for a cookie at the very back of the sleeve.

You blanch. Are civilians even allowed in here? Steve had assured you that they were, since you were his  _ personal  _ guest, and now is the time that he’s supposed to pipe up and say something, but he’s just listening to your further embarrassment play out while setting a cutting board out on the counter. 

“Um,” you say, very lamely, and stretch as far as you can in search of the words, “Steve invited me?”

Tony pulls out two Oreos from the package and shoves the entirety of one into his mouth. He hands the other to you, which, of course, you take and woah- he’s kind of chewing with his mouth open, and you’re okay with it. If anything, it helps calm your nerves, helps  _ humanize  _ him more than any of his memoirs or interviews or those documentary segments they sometimes air on MTV ever have.

His eyes widen ever-so-slightly as he processes what you said.

“You and Capsicle made up?” he says, through a half-mouthful of Oreo, and you take a tentative bite of your own cookie. “Oh, thank  _ God. _ Let me tell you,” he leans closer to you, and he smells like pricey cologne and coffee, and Steve is still smiling insufferably and pulling out a kitchen knife from a drawer, “He is a pain in the  _ ass  _ when he’s miserable.”

Your head is spinning. Tony knows about the argument? Steve was miserable? Tony is talking to you like you’re a friendly acquaintance? 

And Capsicle?

“Capsicle?” You say, because that’s the easiest place to start.

Steve stiffens, slightly. You still manage to catch it.

Tony pulls out another Oreo and grins. “ It’s a mixture of  _ Captain,” _ he says, and puts one hand up, “and  _ icicle. _ Capsicle!.” He puts the other, Oreo-holding hand up and then presses his two hands together.

You laugh, partially at the joke but mostly at Steve’s scowl. Tony Stark is only aware of the former and grins at you.

“That’s a good one.” You smile back and finish the rest of your Oreo. 

Steve starts loudly chopping his strawberries into halves.

“What about you, bookstore girl?” Tony says, gesturing towards you and then Steve. “You got any good nicknames for your boytoy?”

.You’re never going to forgive yourself for this, but you fucking  _ snort. _ Steve, while pulling out a mixer from a cabinet, falters, looking wholly scandalized, and gives you an appalled stare.

Serves him right. 

“I have a bunch of nicknames,” you say, and slide off your seat. Steve looks taken aback, like he’s about to say,  _ no, you don’t. _

Standing, you tick each one off your fingers. “Gramps, Grandpa, Grandfather. And sometimes, it’s not really a nickname, but whenever we’re, like, having fun, I call him Steven.”

As you talk you make your way around the kitchen island. You’re in closer proximity to Tony, which  _ doesn’t  _ freak you out. He’s proven to be much better company than Natasha or Bucky, probably because he looks like he’s going to change the oil on your car rather than looking like he’s about to kill you. You slide past him and head for Steve.

“And,” you add, reaching Steve and lightly patting his bicep, “other times, when we’re still having, you know,  _ fun,  _ I like to call him  _ Sexy.” _

Steve chokes.

Tony fights back a surprised laugh, but you keep your face impassive. 

His eyes flicker back and forth from you to Steve. After a moment, he catches on.

“Tell me more,” he says, feigning intrigue and digging around for another Oreo.

Steve is silent.

You clear your throat. “I’ll be like, ‘hey Sexy, come here.’”

Tony takes a large bite of his Oreo. “I like that.” 

“Or I’ll be like, ‘Sexy, do you want your receipt with you or in the bag?’”

“Very appropriate for the work environment.”

“Or even, like,  _ ‘damn  _ Sexy, you are  _ killing  _ it in those sweatpants.’”

“He  _ does  _ kill it in sweatpants.”

You both carry out a round of serious, thoughtful nodding.

After a moment, you spare a glance at Steve.

He’s pink. His eyebrows are furrowed, and he’s looking at you like you’ve insulted him and betrayed him and sullied his good name, or whatever and his massive hands are frozen on his mixer, and poor boy, he’s been stunned into silence and hasn’t even been able to make his  _ smoothie _ yet.

It takes all of your willpower to not bust out laughing. Tony looks over at Steve and starts struggling with the same thing, and the two of you let out a series of strained exhales. Then you make a noise that sounds like a whistling teakettle, and-

You both  _ explode  _ into heavy, wheezing laughter.

“The- the  _ look,”  _ Tony gasps.

“On his  _ face,” _ you finish, leaning against Steve to stop yourself from falling, you’re laughing so hard. 

***

Steve should be mad at you for calling him something so untrue and inappropriate and…  _ raunchy. _ But after Tony leaves, taking his Oreos with him and affectionately telling you that he’ll see you around, you fixate your gaze on him and give him a smile, and your face is still flushed from laughter, and he never understood what people meant when they described eyes as  _ sparkling  _ until now, and he’s completely gone.

“That was  _ not _ funny,” he says, shaking his head as he finally, finally redirects his attention back to his smoothie.

“I thought it was,” you say, and rather than coming to his side, you place both hands on his shoulder and stand up on your tiptoes, peering over his shoulder to watch him pour fruit into the mixer.

His heart is racing, and he is so  _ pleased-  _ you can call him whatever you want, you can even call him that expletive of a nickname, as long as you stay close to him like this, press your hands against him like this. He’ll tell you anything and everything, he decides, if you want to know it. If it keeps you by his side and keeps you happy and keeps  _ him  _ happy, since it seems like you’ve gotten him to a place in his life where he can consider selfish things like his own happiness, he’ll tell you it all.

But he’s going to be slow. He told you that, and he was in the process of elaborating further, when Tony had walked in and interrupted and made you laugh. Would it be wrong to bring it back up?

“So,” he says, and he partially regrets moving on from the jokes, since they are what’s making you smile the way you are, but for the sake of better communication, he has to say it. “Back to what we were talking about earlier.”

“Yeah,” you say, and your hands slip away from his shoulder. You pull away from him and turn to his side, the same spot you had avoided just a moment ago. Steve wants to bring you back to where you were- or closer, he can’t really lie to himself anymore- but now he can see you, and looking at your face will probably help him as he listens to what you have to say.

He places and secures the lid on the mixer as you fiddle with your hands. Your nail polish is the same fire-engine red, Peggy’s-lipstick red, from the day he told you who he was at the bookstore. At your thumbs, the paint is starting to chip.

“I know that we’re going to take things slow,” you say, looking down at your hands instead of at him. “That’s okay. I’m fine with that. We don’t have to do  _ anything  _ until you’re completely comfortable with it.”

The words are a relief to hear. Steve had guessed that you were going to say something like this, because after watching you cry in the hospital room he had realized that you’re just as swept up in him as he is in you, but hearing it is so much more reassuring than just speculating.

Still, because he has to be absolutely sure about it, he presses further.

“Are you sure?” He asks, thumb hovering over the power button of the mixer. “ Don’t people do things differently now? Wouldn’t you want to do...  _ things  _ faster?”

The clarification of what he means by  _ things  _ hasn’t been touched. You and him both carefully skirt over it.

You look up at him. “I’m sure, Steve. I want to do what makes you happy.”

He can finally breathe, and there’s a smile tugging at the corners at your mouth.

Steve knows your words are certain, because you always seem to end serious situations with some type of joke, maybe to defuse or to make him or yourself less uncomfortable, less high-strung. It's a habit he finds endlessly  _ endearing _ , even when your jokes are unfunny and sometimes too crude for his liking.

(No wonder you got along so well with Tony.)

“Say it,” he sighs, pretending to be spent, just to carry you further along.

“I don’t have anything to say!” 

In an effort to stop your smile, you  _ bite your lip,  _ and Steve is winded again, the breath stolen right out of him.

You look… you look  _ good  _ when you do that, he can’t come up with anything else, his thoughts are suddenly stunted and incomprehensible, and he just looks at you, that’s all he can really do. He wasn’t planning on kissing you anytime soon, but if you keep on doing that, he might just do it, insecurity be damned. If he fucks it up, you’ll laugh it off, anyway, and it’ll undoubtedly be a  _ moment. _

And then you ruin it.

“Finish making your smoothie, Sexy,” you say, and abruptly burst into a fit of laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! next chapter is going to be one of those intense "can they PLEASE just fucking KISS" type of thing.   
> did you guys like tony?? i wanted to have some fun with his character!! he is literally so underrated in the mcu :( i have a fic idea for him that i might write in a little bit sjdkfsjd. feel free to let me know what you thought of the chapter, kudos and comments are always appreciated!


	8. drowsy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4616 words leading up to a kiss. the word "kiss" is not used until word 4617.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lots of pov switches in this one, i wasn't planning on it but then it just happened. i was going to do a bunch of little scenes with rising tension but then i got lazy so instead enjoy 3-4 longer scenes that are tense throughout.

You sweep a hand across the shelf, fingers skimming over the spines. There’s a book that you’re looking for, you read it a while ago, but you can’t remember what it looks like, or even what the full title is. In the process of studying for finals, you’ve stuffed your mind to the brim, cramming it with so much information that stray bits and pieces at the edges have started to fall out.

After scanning the shelf two more times, you give up. If only you could remember the title! But oh well- you’ll find a random bestseller and give that to Steve instead.

“I can’t find it,” you sigh, and turn around to face him. “Let me get- _ woah, _ you’re close.”

He is, indeed, close.

When did he get so close? Has he been standing like that the entire time? You’re not touching, but one step forward will send you walking right into him. You don’t dare to move.

“Am I?” Steve teases. His mouth is set in a half-smile, his arms crossed over his chest, like he’s protecting himself, or holding himself back.

He looks down at you and you look up at him. He’s wearing one of his dorky hats as a disguise, and still looks like something from a painting, all jawline and broad shoulders and eyes. His eyes- beautiful and glittering as ever but unfamiliarly _ dark- _ bore into you.

“Yeah,” you say, and your voice has nearly jumped up an octave. “You wanna back up, a little bit, buddy?”

Rationally, you know that you could squeeze out through the side, and he could drill his composure-wrecking gaze into the bookshelf instead of into you. Still, you stay where you are, waiting with a fluttery heart to see what he says. To see what he does.

Steve tilts his head up, lost in mock thought, like he’s pondering your question. The sight of his bare neck, stubble trailing down and Adam’s apple poking out and prominent, almost does numbers on you. You look away before letting yourself get too far, and hope that someone walks into the aisle, to force him to step away and to save you from… whatever he’s trying to do to you.

“What if I don’t?” He asks, answering you with another question. He keeps his head up, as if you’ll reach up and bring it down, hold it level to your own.

You are  _ not  _ going to do that.

“Uh…”

You’re stumbling, failing. Maybe if you got more than six hours of sleep last night you would still have some sense of composure, but that fell away the second you turned around.

“This is not a very work-friendly situation,” you manage to choke out.

Steve’s smile disappears. He stares at you dryly, clearly saying  _ something  _ by saying nothing, but you don’t know what.

_ (Captain America  _ is pressing you against a fucking _ bookshelf-  _ you don’t know  _ anything _ anymore.)

Silence stretches out thin, threatening to snap.

“My bad,” he says, eventually.

Then he’s stepping away, and the pressure on your chest is lifted, and then you’re  _ nervous,  _ looking away and adjusting your lanyard and tucking your hair behind your ear. You’re thrown into a flurry of motions, stepping past Steve and exhaling shakily and making some lame comment about some book, trying your very best to act normal, but how can you be normal if his eyes are now on your back, staring at you with a gaze so charged?

***

“Did you get a haircut?”

A week later, Steve poses the question innocently, already knowing the answer.

You frown and pause, the book in your hand momentarily irrelevant. “No.”

“New shirt?”

He knows the answer to that question, too.

“No.”

“Are those new earrings?”

He leans forward, about to tap the beads hanging from your earlobes, but catches himself at the last second and pulls back. To his  _ great  _ misfortune, this isn't the place. 

You back up, too, narrowing your eyes at him. The beads, multicolored and catching bits of stray light, swing with your movement.

_ “No. _ What are you trying to say?”

Steve takes a breath, mustering up the courage to tell you.

(It’s immature, really. He knows how to talk. But his heart has leapt to his throat and his palms are clammy, and the confidence he’s had in the past, which led to him kissing you on the cheek and standing  _ dizzyingly  _ close to you, isn’t with him today. And what he’s about to say is the whole reason why.)

“You look really pretty today.”

Your mouth drops open.

He gives you a small smile, ignoring his stuttering heart. 

“Thanks,” you say unsteadily, and look down at the book and away from him, and he wants to bring your head back up but doesn’t do anything. “Um, so do you.”

He wasn’t expecting that. “Really?”

You look so embarrassed that he has to laugh. 

It takes time for you to respond. You look up at him for a split second, eyes wide and cheeks reddening. Then your gaze darts around, going from the window behind him to your shoes to one of the shelves. 

“Yeah.” You pause, placing the book on the counter. “You always do.”

At that moment, Steve knows that if you let him, he would sweep you up and into him.

You look so lovely and so tired. He wants to  _ hold  _ you, a thought he’s never had before. It’s an unfamiliar desire, coming out of nowhere, but now it’s the only thing he can think about. He wants to rest, with you. 

“Thank you,” he says, and smiles wider. You smile, too, a few seconds delayed, and it stops just short of your eyes. 

Everything else is carried out- paying and taking the book from you and brushing his fingers against yours on purpose. You tell him to have a nice day, and he almost says _ I am,  _ but maybe he’s not. His day  _ could  _ be nice, if he could hold you and let you close your eyes.

***

Winter, for all of its admirable qualities, does have one downside- the sun sets too soon.

The night settles itself over the sky as you get off the subway and start your walk home. You take all of the precautions, keys in between each finger like claws, pepper spray easily accessible in the side pocket of your backpack, walking briskly around alleyways and lowlit street corners and anyone that might look sketchy.

It’s exhausting, and by the time you’re home,  _ you’re _ exhausted.

You reach your apartment complex, the main doors happily glowing yellow by a street light, with the surrounding area dark and, in contrast, ominous. Still, you can relax as you let yourself in, allowing your shoulders to slump and releasing the death grip you have on your keys.

The climb up the stairwell is mostly numb. You’re too caught in fantasizing over the promising evening you have laid out in front of you.. Minimal studying, a sad dinner, and then, finally, the sweet, blissful release of sleep.

You  _ desperately  _ need it.

You go so far in your fantasy as to even plan out what pajamas you’re going to wear (the green flannel ones and an old pullover). But your thoughts are cut off when you get far enough down the hallway to see the man standing outside your door, his head tilted towards you.

Tentatively, you head forward.

What the fuck…

It’s  _ Steve. _ Wearing no disguise and chunky combat boots and pants tight enough to qualify as leggings and his usual winter coat.

“How the fuck did you get up here?” You ask, too tired to not be crass, less surprised than irritated.

He just gives you a look.

You think you know what it means.

He moves out of the way for you to unlock the door. You fumble with your keys and he stays silent, and you don’t have enough headspace to wonder how long he’s been waiting. As you both step inside, you tilt your head to get a good look at him.

Are you seeing spots from sleep deprivation, or are those bruises on his face?

Your body moves faster than your mind does, and once you’re inside with the door closed and locked behind you, you lean in close to his face, to inspect.

A split lip, a cut starting on his upper forehead and disappearing into his hairline. Bruises. Weary eyes, flushed cheeks, from the cold or exertion, you don’t know.

Steve stays still while you stay close. You don’t realize you’re leaning in even closer until he stiffens, sucking in a breath that’s painfully loud in your mutual silence.

Your eyes snap open. When did they close?

Your limbs feel too heavy to move so quickly, but still, you scramble back and immediately busy yourself with taking off your shoes and coat, gaze dropping to your feet. From heavy eyelids or embarrassment, you don’t know.

“Are you okay?” You ask, tucking your gloves into your coat pocket.

Before, it might have been a question too direct, but now you can say it without worry. You’re not expecting a response, though.

“Not really,” he says.

The admission is so foreign to your ears that you bring your eyes back up, wide and shocked. Steve is pointedly looking at the space beside your head.

You don’t know what to say. You can’t- God- you can barely  _ move  _ properly, let alone offer any words of comfort. Desperately, you try to come up with something, anything, but you’re slow and uncertain and Steve mistakes your disjointed silence for an invitation to elaborate.

“I just… you know how things are,” he says vaguely, shrugging off his own coat. You hold your hand out to take it from him. “It was a rough day.”

He hands his coat to you, and with his full body exposed, you can see he is  _ not  _ wearing leggings, but rather his fucking _ Captain America suit. _

You gawk, but it doesn’t look right.

The blue spandex looks dirty. The white star emblem pokes out from the middle of his chest. Gloves are part of the outfit, too, you think, but his hands are bare. You regard his muscles, even more defined underneath the suit, with less emotion than usual, with no emotion, really, because you’re too fucking tired to be…  _ longing,  _ or whatever, and also too worried about him to let your mind wander.

You’ve never seen him in his suit in person before. Even after talking about it so much, Steve has never gone  _ this  _ far.

“Did you come straight here? From…”

You trail off, letting him fill in the blank for himself. Stepping past him, you drape both his coat and yours over the back of the sofa. 

“I did.” He takes off his Captain America boots and follows behind you. “I wanted to see you.”

Wow.

You turn around, and it’s like the bookstore all over again, with him too close to you but not touching you. It’s dangerous- you’re not at work and can therefore do  _ anything, _ and despite its condition, he looks  _ dashing _ in his suit, with it clinging to his skin and all of that, and you don’t have the mental capacity for any inhibitions.

“Wouldn’t someone recognize you?” You ask, trying to think of other things, trying to build some inhibitions to save you.

Steve, expression unreadable, dips his head lower- again,  _ dangerous. _

But he looks as tired as you are, or even worse, and the thought fades away. His eyes are bloodshot, shaded underneath with purple bags. The blood on his lip is crusted over. Bruises that have bloomed over his skin look even worse in the weak apartment light. He needs an ice pack, and while you’re lacking in coat racks and healthy food and words, you have one in the freezer, one thing to give. 

“It’s too dark outside for anyone to have seen.”

“Oh.”

You want to bring your hands up to fiddle with, just so you have something to do to take your mind away from his staring and the proximity of his body. But he’s close enough that you’ll have to touch him to bring your hands up, fingers will brush against his stomach or sternum or that stupid fucking white star. And you  _ don’t _ want that to happen, not right now.

There’s no room to back up, either. The sofa is right behind you. You try it anyway, take a step back and  _ sway  _ when your leg hits the furniture.

You’ll be able to balance yourself, you’re just tired.

But Steve reaches out, one benevolent, patriotic hand coming to steady you on your shoulder, and you don’t know if it’s you or him that does it, when-

His hand goes on your shoulder. You take that dreaded step closer, and you’re chest to chest. The ridges of his suit press against you as you bring your arms up, and he moves his hand from your shoulder to your back, and his other hand goes there, too. You tuck your face into his shoulder and he tucks his into your neck.

You close your eyes.

His eyelashes flutter against your skin as he closes his.

Steve smells like ash and copper, smoke and sweat. You press yourself against him, because he needs it and you need it, and he sighs into your neck. His breath is hot, you can hear his heartbeat.

***

“Do you like watching movies?”

There’s wind rustling in Steve’s ear. You must be outside, walking somewhere. He presses his phone closer against his ear, ignoring the looks his teammates give him and trying to just focus on your voice. 

Showing up at your apartment had been a lapse in judgement, a mistake, and a…  _ sweet  _ moment. He was desperate and feeling low after a mission gone right where all of the wrong things still happened. Then he thought of you- you said you would do what makes him happy, and just seeing you can do that, and anyways, he’s been wanting to-

Steve doesn’t know if you were the one to go in first or if he was, he doesn’t even know what he was going in  _ for, _ but your arms around him grounded him and that’s all that matters.

He knows there was silence, and stillness. Your eyes closed and you pressed your hands against him and he to you, and it wasn’t really holding you, but it was close. He breathed you in. You smelled like cold and cheap laundry detergent and cherry blossom perfume. You’re a fantastic hugger, he now knows, and he also doesn’t know if it was him clinging so tight, or if it was just you and he let himself be pliable to it, roughest parts chipped away.

And then you separated, gave him a look and when off to your little kitchenette. You didn’t talk except for once, to ask if he wanted an ice pack, and tilted your head into your shoulder and yawned. Later, back in the Compound, while flipping through a romance novel, he could not, for the life of him, stop smiling. 

Now you’ve tossed the silence out and talk normally.

You’re a little bit pressed for time, he thinks, probably on your way to somewhere important. He feels a little spark of pride- you, his bookstore girl, have  _ places  _ to _ be. _

He’s so far in his thoughts that you have to repeat the question to bring him back.

“Steven, hello? Do you like watching movies? This is an  _ important  _ question.”

You talk fast. 

“Yeah,” he says, “I like movies.”

“Okay, ohmygod I am  _ so _ fucking stressed out right now, and all I want to do tonight is watch something super shitty for a few hours to relax. Do you want to come over?”

“What movie do you want to watch?” He asks, to distract you as he thinks it over.

The thing is, he  _ doesn’t _ like movies. He gets too caught up in the period details, in admiring the settings or the hairstyles or the cars, and loses track of the character names and faces and even the plot, which he barely understands in the first place. The fight scenes are always atrociously inaccurate. Half the jokes fly high over his head. War movies are too disgraceful to even think about.

(Also, he can’t use a remote very well.)

But he  _ does _ like you, so he’ll deal with it.

(He could go in for  _ it  _ tonight, not for a hug.)

“My friend lets me use her Netflix account,” you chirp, sounding too energetic to match the state you were in when he last saw you. You must have gotten some sleep, or coffee. “We can watch something on there, or _ wait- _ I have an idea.”

Your voice raises higher, either out of excitement or because a horn starts honking loudly in the background. Steve smiles, despite himself. “What’s the idea?”

“I have a DVD of the movie adaptation of our favorite book.”

He doesn’t catch on. “Favorite book?”

There’s a smile in your voice. 

“Our favorite  _ sex book-” _

“Okay!” He interrupts, and you’re laughing, and he’s praying that Bucky, sitting on his left, hasn’t overheard. “Text me the time and I’ll be there.”

After you hang up, your laughter still rings in his ears.

Steve puts his phone down. His teammates had subdued their conversation while he was talking, whether to eavesdrop or just to be polite, he doesn’t know and doesn’t mind. They all know that he was talking to you, anyway. Especially Tony, for whatever immature and banal reason he’s come up with this time.

“Got some Netflix and chill lined up?” He says, waggling his eyebrows. 

Steve has no fucking idea what he’s talking about.

***

Everything starts off well enough. The DVD disc is slid into your laptop, which is ancient enough to still have a DVD player. Steve takes a seat  _ right next to you _ on the sofa, close enough that your legs touch, and you don’t even flinch, or stiffen or say anything embarrassing. You decide on using earbuds, and share them with him, because the thought of sitting _ right next to him _ and watching a sex scene and having moaning noises echo throughout your apartment is  _ unbearable.  _

But as the movie starts, you realize that you should have drank more coffee.

What’s happening with the plot? You don’t know. You’re tired, and pressed close to Steve’s side, with him radiating heat like a furnace, renders you too sleepy to fight against. Thoughts keep on drifting, your eyelids keep on threatening to close, your head keeps on falling down to your chest.

Still, you try your best to stay awake. He would probably understand, but falling asleep on your guest would be rude as hell, and who else is going to laugh at his expressions when the first sex scene comes up?

You cross your arms and uncross them, bring your feet up on the sofa and bring them back down, cross your legs. Several yawns are stifled. Steve shifts and smiles at you, and you wordlessly smile back.

You are so fucking  _ pissed  _ at yourself- you are watching a movie with your  _ crush, _ and if this plays out like any of your teenage fantasies, he’ll wrap an arm around you, and bring a hand under your chin, and you’ll forget about the movie because he’ll be leaning in for a… leaning in for  _ something,  _ and it’ll be sweet and romantic. But  _ none  _ of that is going to happen, because you are about to pass the fuck out.

While someone says something, and a song starts to play, it happens. With your arms crossed again, and with Steve weirdly enraptured with what’s playing out on the screen, even though you’re sure that he’s just as lost as you are in terms of what’s actually happening, you fall asleep.

***

You’re asleep.

Steve knew it would happen. For the entire duration of the movie, you’d been fidgeting and yawning and not making any comments, and you definitely strike him as the type of person who randomly interjects in the middle of movies, to make dumb jokes or point out plot inconsistencies. But you were silent, and the next time he looked over at you, your chin was grazing your chest and your eyes were closed.

He’s not upset. You told him you had a lot going on in your life, work and school and something called _ general existential dread, _ which, despite how looming the phrase is, you smiled while saying. Was it meant to be a joke? He doesn’t know.

He does know that he’s disappointed. Watching by himself, the movie is no longer entertaining, staring at the various business settings and connecting dialogue to actual quotes from the book is no longer fun. The thought of watching an upcoming _ sex  _ scene in the dark of your apartment, with you dozing peacefully by his side, is…

Unbearable.

The last notes of a song are cut off as he takes out his earbud. Your hair grazes his fingers as he gently takes out yours. If you were awake, he would let his hand linger.

The movie is paused. Steve almost closes the laptop screen, but worries at the last minute about messing something up, so he leaves it open. The scene is blurry, dimly lighting the contours of your face blue. The curve of your cheek, the ridge of your nose, the swell of your lips. The plane of your neck, disappearing into the wrinkled neckline of your shirt. He doesn’t dare to go any further.

Hesitantly, treating you like you’re made of glass, because the undisturbed expression on your face has him halfway convinced that you  _ are,  _ he brings his arm up.

He’s terrified, has no fucking idea what he’s doing. This could be completely wrong, could be a complete, utter, trainwreck of an action. 

But still, he drapes his arm over your shoulders, bringing you even closer into his side. Your head lolls, comes to rest at his shoulder, and he nearly  _ jumps  _ out of his skin. That  _ wasn’t  _ supposed to happen, but you’re soft against him, and you look much more comfortable, so he doesn’t mind it. He stays completely still for minutes, to make sure he doesn’t accidentally wake you up, or press you against him too harshly, ruin your peace with his skyrocketing pulse. 

You don’t stir. With your slowed breathing steady, he ducks his head down and sweeps his lips over the crown of your head.

***

You drift back awake only ten minutes later, because you are _ warm. _ It feels so good, heat blooming over your torso, and you burrow further into the blanket, not quite into your senses, fully intending on falling back asleep, and then your blanket  _ moves. _

Just like that, you’re not tired anymore.

Your eyes snap open, your mind catches you up on you surroundings and _ holy motherfucking shit _ you are literally  _ cuddling  _ with Steve on the sofa right now, and your face is pressed into his fucking shoulder, you’re quite nearly on top of him, what the actual fucking  _ fuck? _

You pull away from him and frantically retreat to the other side of the sofa, knocking off a few cushions in your frenzy. Steve startles, and he recoils, too, eyes wide and watching you scramble. He’s not wearing earbuds, and neither are you, you realize, and while you desperately look around to avoid his gaze, you spot them neatly coiled beside your laptop.

“I’m so sorry,” you say, aggressively staring at the earbuds, voice still scratchy with sleep. “I had  _ no  _ idea I was doing that.”

Yes, if he was okay with it, you would definitely fall back to where you were. Maybe even wrap your arms around him, whisper a cheesy and unoriginal line into his ear to make him blush. But right now, cuddling feels like you’ve skipped, like, a  _ dozen _ too many steps. For heaven’s sake, you haven’t even-

“It’s okay!” Steve says, bringing his arm from the back of the sofa to his lap. You didn’t even register that it was there. “I…” 

He falters.

You tense up, waiting for him to tell you how uncomfortable of a position you put him in, how you totally disregarded his personal space. 

“I don’t mind,” he says, and sighs heavily. Here it comes. “I mean, I  _ liked  _ it.”

_ “What?” _

Confused, no,  _ astonished,  _ you look back up at him. He’s wringing his hands in his lap, cheeks faintly turning pink, but only from your outburst. You, a product of modern society, are more flustered about this than  _ Steve Rogers,  _ a certified, all-American  _ fossil. _

“Was I not supposed to say that?” He asks, and sits up ramrod-straight, like he’s getting ready to stand up.

“Don’t leave,” you blurt, holding a hand out, as if that’s enough to stop him. “It was fine you said that. I just don’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything. I- like… um, I was  _ close. _ To you. And I don’t want to be if you don’t want me to? Be close, I mean. Because, like, boundaries?”

The words spilling from your mouth make no sense. You talk anyway, out of nervousness, and once you stop, you take the sudden, pregnant silence to reflect on the situation.

Sitting on opposite sides of the couch, both still as statues. You and Steve look like absolute  _ idiots. _

But you can’t bring yourself to smile about it.

Steve’s brow furrows. He’s probably debating whether he should leave right now or say something first. How are you able to always fuck things up? 

Your hand is still outstretched. You’re too caught up in the repeating thought of  _ what the fuck is happening _ to notice, until Steve reaches out and presses his palm flat against yours, like he’s giving you the world’s weakest high-five.

His hand folds neatly over yours. The situation becomes even more ridiculous- sitting on opposite sides of the couch, still as statues, arms completely outstretched and hands touching like some over-dramatic play. This time, you smile, albeit shakily.

Steve doesn’t return it. But he scoots closer, and you can’t even laugh at the visual of Captain America _ scooting, _ because he’s suddenly pressed himself close to you, legs and shoulders touching, chests facing each other instead of your laptop screen. His face and lip looks like they’ve been healed up. Your joined hands are lowered but don’t rest anywhere, hovering between your thigh and his. 

He brings his head close to yours. Your breath hitches.

The light of a standing lamp is the only thing illuminating the room, laptop screen having gone dark and the overhead light turned off. Steve’s face is harsh, blanketed in shadow, his mouth set in a firm line, but the way he’s looking at you is enough to make you melt. Slowly, you bring your hands to rest on your leg, closer to your knee.

He jerks. You stay still.

“It’s okay,” you say quietly, and don’t do anything else.

You don’t fully know how to go about this, but unlike the evening in the snow, you’re going to let everything be up to him. 

Steve dips his face even closer, you keep yours where it is, and you’re nose to nose. His hand is burning into your thigh, every nerve in your body on fire and attuned to him.

He breathes in, and you can faintly feel his beard tickling your skin, and even though his eyes are blue you see them like suns, rising and brilliant and suddenly dipping, falling and closing as he comes even closer, mouth skimming over yours, and you can only keep your eyes open, you are so,  _ so  _ awake-

He’s kissing you. 

_ Steve is kissing you. _

It’s gentle and sweet and wholly him- his lips press against yours softly, hesitantly. You take your free hand and bring it up to the back of his neck, and he gasps against you and kisses you  _ harder.  _ You have to pull your hand from his grasp and bring it to cup his face, to anchor yourself to him, you’re on the verge of floating away. He hasn’t done this in over seventy years, but he is totally  _ destroying  _ you, with his mouth on yours and his hand on your thigh.

You’re lightheaded when you break apart, nearly overwhelmed. Steve opens his eyes and you can only stare at him.

“Was that okay?” He says, and he sounds hesitant, already leaning away from you.

He’s nervous, you think, and you feel weirdly possessive. You’re the first person he’s kissed since he came out of the ice. You’re the first person that’s kissed him. You’re… _ he kissed you. _

“That was perfect,” you say, and you sound totally, utterly  _ gone,  _ voice weak, swept away by him.

His eyes darken, pupils blown wide. You’re going to combust.

Steve dips his head back down, Christ, is he going in again? You don’t know if you’ll be able to handle it, there’s already too much going on in your head, and his lips are so pink and  _ wet  _ and he brings up his other hand to cradle the side of your face, so tenderly. Your own hands are still on him, too, the hand on his neck having travelled up to rest in his hair, the one on his cheek hot against his skin.

You are  _ definitely  _ not going to be able to handle it.

“Let’s watch the movie!” You chirp, turning your head away. He barely misses your mouth, lips meeting your cheek instead. 

He pulls away from you, moving faster than lightning. 

“The movie,” he repeats, and casts a  _ hateful  _ glance over at your laptop, sadly sitting by itself on the coffee table. “You want to watch the  _ movie.” _

Well, not really, but if you don’t come up with some way to distract yourself, you’ll do something stupid.

“I- I need a minute.” You smile at him, suddenly shy. “I know you were worried about this, but I feel  _ crazy  _ right now, Steve. I need to, like, _ recover.” _

That doesn’t sound like the best word to use, but Steve’s eyes widen, and then he looks  _ pleased.  _

Regretfully, you bring your hands away from him, and he does the same to you. You miss the contact immediately, but you’re also overheating, so it’s okay. Steve moves back to his previous spot, still looking at you, and while you straighten yourself out, you absentmindedly lick your lips, and his  _ entire body _ tenses up, and you figure that you’re getting no sleep tonight.

“Let’s see where we are,” you say, reaching out for the computer. “Hey, this is right before the good part.”

Steve already knows what’s coming up, but he plays along. “What’s the good part?”

“The first  _ sex  _ scene, Steven,” and then, because you apparently have no sense of self-preservation, and your mind is still spinning in disoriented circles, “You can hold my hand if you get scared.”

Except he doesn’t. 

When you move closer to him, he wraps an arm around you, and you nestle into his side again. For whatever reason, after he puts his earbud in and you unpause the movie, you sweep a light kiss over his shoulder. He turns, looking away from the screen and at you, smiles and then wraps his other arm around you, pressing you to his chest. Apparently, Captain America is a hugger. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone even half as hot as chris evans kissed me i would probably go into cardiac arrest and die on the spot.   
> anyways, here's chapter 8!!! i have only 1 or 2 more chapters planned for this fic, can't believe it's coming to an end!!!! i love all of you readers so much!! the past few chapters have been getting a lot of sweet comments and i appreciate it more than you all could ever know, any time i see a comment in my inbox i internally do the cringiest happy dance LOL. hope you guys enjoyed this chapter!! feel free to let me know what you thought about it!! again, ily all!! <3  
> (also, i'm working on a bucky fic AND a tony fic rn!! stay tuned for those, i'll be posting them as soon as bookworm is finished!)


	9. it's official (end)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> damn bam. shit happens. shit is resolved. one (1) slightly steamy kiss. natasha and bucko pull up twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> goddamn this is the last chapter... brb gonna go cry into my notebook  
> i was gonna go hard and write a stellar last chapter but then i got lazy so it's just average. this has to be the last chapter because there is NO WAY i could drag the plot further. i exhausted all creativity for this fic in chapters 5 and 7. ngl those are the best chapters of this entire fic. hope you guys like this tho!  
> warning: reader goes crazy in the 3rd scene. NO SMUT because i don't think a smut scene would fit with the theme of this story but it is still... slightly suggestive? idk. you can pretend they have smut. write it in your head luvs. ily enjoy.

“Oh my God- that’s not right.”

Steve watches as the first sex scene develops on screen, jaw dropping with horror. You are  _ crying _ from laughing so hard, at his expressions and at the way he’s  _ gripping _ your hand. It was supposed to be a joke, but he actually did it, held your hand when he got… scared.

“Do people actually  _ do  _ that?” He asks, completely undisturbed by you totally fucking losing it.

“All the time,” you wheeze, quite nearly  _ dying  _ when he gasps at a particularly lewd moan.

***

After ordering, you pick the usual spot. Corner table in the back.

You sit down and unpack your backpack, taking out your laptop and notes and too many pens while Steve waits up front at the counter. His hat is pulled low over his face, hopefully enough to prevent the barista from recognizing him.

He returns with two coffees in hand. You smile up at him as he sets them down.

It could have been because of the first kiss, or maybe he just figured something out on his own. Steve has morphed into someone confident- this fucker is seriously  _ unabashed.  _ He touches you like it’s the most familiar action to him, kisses you with  _ no  _ hesitation. It’s a side of him you’ve never seen before- you love it.

He kissed you when he met you outside of the bookstore, kissed you right before ducking into this cafe. You’re still dizzy from it, but still in one piece. You and Captain America have kissed  _ three whole times. _

Technically, four. But you think of the night in the snow as illegitimate, like it didn’t happen. It doesn’t count. Pretending it didn’t happen is easier than trying to recall it, even if it’s still messing with your decisions.

Everything so far has been… pointedly  _ closed-mouth. _ It’s kissing, but in its most innocent forms, no matter how flustered you get from it. It’s not that you don’t want to go further, it’s the opposite. But you don’t want to be the one that starts it, in case it upsets the balance you’ve so tediously struck with him. Things are good now, things are great, and you want it to stay that way. So you _ will not  _ try anything.

“How many sugars do you take?”

You look away from your laptop screen. Steve is fiddling with your coffee cup, the little dish holding sugar packets pulled close to him.

“Oh, four. But I can do it myself-”

He waves you off. “I’ll do it!” He says, pulling the necessary number of packets out of the dish. “You just focus on your studying.”

You watch him rip open each pocket with a precision you could never possess, not even  _ one  _ grain of sugar grain of sugar spilling onto the tabletop. Steve looks so  _ focused  _ as he does it, and when he finishes stirring it all in and proudly pushes your cup back to you, you nearly get emotional.

Before you get too nervous, you quickly lean over the table and kiss him.

_ Now _ it’s been four times.

While he stares at you, pleasantly surprised, you gulp down a mouthful of coffee and burn your tongue.

Steve fiddles with his phone while you work. Neatly, you spread out your pages of notes, even though the notes themselves are barely-legible messes of ink. You study, content with the silence and diligent with the pen in your hand, acutely aware of his gaze continuously flickering from his phone to you.

You’re scribbling a correction into a margin when he speaks up.

“Natasha and Bucky are in the area,” he says.

“Do they want to stop by and say hi?” You ask, still writing. You haven’t met Natasha in a while, and it wouldn’t really be  _ nice  _ to see her again, since she isn’t a very nice person, but for Steve’s sake, you’ll be enthusiastic about it.

Steve smiles, obviously pleased by your question. “I’ll check.” He hopelessly taps out a text message with one finger.

Later, as you’re rifling through the pages of your notebook, a hand clasps your shoulder.

You jolt and turn around in your chair. Natasha stares over you with a straight face. Bucky looms over her, both of them as intimidating as ever, all menace and muscle, but you almost burst out laughing.

They’ve pulled a  _ Steve.  _ Both of them wear baseball caps and jeans and normal shirts, like they’re a normal couple on a day out in the city, instead of accomplished assassins. Of course, they still wear their signature leather jackets. Do they never get cold? You wonder that as you say hi to both of them, smiling without having to think about it.

“Can I see that?” Natasha takes her hand off your shoulder and slides into the seat next to you. She gestures at your notebook.

You slide it over to her. Bucky sits down next to Steve and the two of them fall into easy conversation.

Natasha flips through the pages, holding the notebook up. At first you think that she’s skimming over the words, but as her eyes narrow, you realize that she’s actually reading it, only slightly bothered by your handwriting.

You’re about to say something when she passes the notebook back to you.

“You’re smarter than you look,” she says, not to you but to the entire  _ table, _ loud enough that Bucky and Steve pause their conversation.

Steve frowns. He looks like he’s about to defend you, maybe and you remember that he’s never actually seen you and Natasha interact before. You lightly kick him under the table, shaking your head.

“Thank you!” You say, sincerely, like her words struck you as a compliment.

They did. Sort of.

Steve’s brown furrows. Bucky watches in amusement, reaching out and stealing a sip of Steve’s coffee.

Natasha, as flawless as ever, takes it all in stride. “You’re welcome.”

There’s an awkward silence. You don’t know how long they’re planning on staying, but you shut your laptop and gather all of your notes, pick up all of your pens and stow everything neatly in your backpack.

“So, how are you guys?” 

It’s not a weird question in the slightest, but Bucky looks  _ shocked. _ He blinks in surprise. 

He and Natasha exchange a series of urgent glances. From the corner of your eye, you see her jaw clench. Then it relaxes,  _ she  _ relaxes, leaning back in her seat and- holy shit-  _ smiling. _

Steve beams at you as they start to talk to you,  _ normally, _ like you’re a friend.

***

The elevator doors slide open and you step out. This time, it’s not Steve in the living room, but nearly every other Avenger there is. So many powerful people, just lounging around, and still able to make your heart race and palms sweat.

You catch Bucky leaning against a wall, talking to a man with close-cropped black hair. He waves at you, since you’re now, like, _ friends,  _ and you wave back. The man he’s talking to looks over at you and does a double take, before smiling at you and whispering something to Bucky that you can't hear.

Natahsa’s on one of the couches flipping through a magazine. She sees you and  _ smiles. _ It has you feeling the same way you do when Steves smiles, absolutely thrilled and a little bit shy. You’re  _ friends  _ with _ Black Widow _ now, too.

Tony’s on another couch, feet propped up on the coffee table, mindlessly channel surfing. His hair is disheveled and still looks amazing, and his socks don’t match.

“Bookstore girl!” He says when he sees you, gesturing for you to come closer. You walk over. “It’s so good to see you. Are you here for Steve?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

All of the other people in the room, who you’ve seen on the news but have never even thought once about meeting, are looking at you. You can’t bring yourself to look back at them, even just to smile. For fuck’s sake, they’re  _ Avengers. _

Tony grins and shakes his head. “I knew you were,” he says, like it was difficult to figure out. “He’s in the kitchen. Hey Cap, guess who’s here?”

Steve comes ambling out after hearing Tony’s raised voice. He sees you and walks right over, both of you hovering beside the couch.

“Hi,” he says, and takes your face in his hand and kisses you on the mouth.

Holy  _ fuck,  _ he is  _ eager  _ today.

After a second, he pulls away, but the gesture leaves you feeling like you’ve been hit by a fucking _ train.  _

You gawk. Natasha gawks. Tony, with his thumb frozen over the remote buttons, gawks. Everyone gawks, probably. You still won’t look at them but their sudden silence says enough.

“Let’s go,” Steve says. You’re more than happy to follow him.

Steve takes you to his room. You’re fully aware of the implications as you take the space in. It’s huge, way bigger and much more lavish than your apartment, but plainly decorated. His bed is neatly made, with a crisp blue comforter and matching pillows. A few framed photographs are hung on the walls, of him and all of the people you just saw doing normal things- in swimsuits at a beach, making dumb faces, holding up cones of half-melted ice cream. Cute.

The books catch your eye.

Pushed against the far wall is a bookshelf, looking new and expensive and made of real wood. It’s not full, but Steve has neatly placed all of the books he’s bought from your store in fun arrangements, some by color, some by author, some shelved and some stacked. It’s so pretty, and thoughtful.

Steve stands beside you, shoulder to shoulder.

You turn away from the bookshelf and face him. You’re uneasy, a little, or maybe it’s some twisted type of excitement. The kind you get at the top of the rollercoaster, right before it plunges down.

You really,  _ really  _ like this man.

“So,” you start, trying to ward off the awful, intrusive thoughts that are starting to creep into your head, “what’s up?”

Even though there isn’t much space, Steve steps closer to you. 

You’ve been like this in multiple situations now, almost up against each other, but you still lose your breath, get weak at the knees. His eyes darken and his hands are hovering as he decides where on you to place him, and you’re suddenly wondering whether or not he locked the door.

“I’m good,” he says, taking too much time to respond. His voice is rough, undeniably _ not  _ sounding good. “How are you?”

“I-” Your voice catches as his hands just barely skim over your waist, not quite touching you the way you’re suddenly dying for him to.

He notices and  _ smirks  _ and does it again, pulling away before you can fall into the sensation. A ghost of a touch- he’s fucking  _ teasing  _ you, and it’s insufferable, and you are  _ falling  _ to it. Goddamn, it wouldn’t hurt your dignity to show at least an  _ ounce  _ of resolve.

“I am doing  _ great,”  _ you grit out. “I’m- I’m fucking  _ swell.” _

Steve laughs. His hands go to your waist again and stay, and you can feel the sensation of each of his fingers through the worn cotton of your shirt, pressing and urgent, and it is a serious miracle that you are still standing upright.

Your pupils must be embarrassingly dilated, or maybe you accidentally gasp, because Steve makes a noise in the back of his throat that’s half-strangled and fully _ hot, _ and then he kisses you.

This is so different from anything you’ve ever experienced- this is all-consuming, mind-numbing,  _ euphoric, _ all coming from the feel of his hands and mouth on you. You don’t think you’ve ever kissed like this before, have been kissed like this before. It’s an awakening, and you are awake and and jittery and wanting-

You open your mouth to him without thinking. You let your teeth graze over his lower lip, gentle yet demanding, bring a hand up to fist his hair. He’s the one that kissed you in a room full of people, but now you’re the one that’s behaving reckless, fully untamed.

You let yourself trail over, instinct holding the reins instead of rational thought, trail messy kisses down the corner of his mouth and farther down to his neck, over the same expanses of skin you were just admiring. You’re biting and keep your other hand flat on his chest, pushing him back and back. He narrowly misses the bookshelf, and then you have him pressed against the wall.

It’s only when he groans against you does your mind stop short-circuiting, and you realize that this isn’t right.

You are  _ badly  _ fucking things up.

Abruptly, you pull away, ignoring the obscene noise your lips make as they leave him. You pull your hands away, too, and shake away the last of your want and look at him.

Steve is always put-together. Even when he’s bruised or bloodied or just nervous, he’s always unwavering, always able to stand tall and composed. But now?

Now he looks totally _ wrecked.  _ His hair is all unkempt and his mouth is swollen and he’s panting, chest heaving with each breath, and there’s a faint sheen of sweat on his brown, and  _ you  _ were the cause of it all.

You want to be proud, but you only feel guilty.

“Oh, Steve,” you say, and you feel like you might actually cry. “I’m sorry.”

It takes him a minute to comprehend your words. He’s dazed, and still against the wall, and you have a sudden, mini identity crisis. You are a fucking _ freak. _

Steve inhales shakily. You can’t look at his face anymore. “What- what  _ happened?” _

You just, like, gave him a  _ hickey. _ Is he aware of that? Did people give each other hickies in the 1940s? Have you just messed everything up by forcing too much on him at once? You don’t want him to feel pressured or overwhelmed or obligated to be doing this, even though all of your actions are probably leading him to feel _ exactly  _ that.

_ “Fuck.”  _ You press your hand to your forehead and step away from him, his hands sliding off of you. “I don’t- I don’t even  _ know.  _ I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have done that, you weren’t ready, I can go-”

“Don’t go. What are you talking about?”

Your skin is burning up underneath your hand. You must look just as disheveled as Steve does if not more.

“I don’t know,  _ God-” _ You look around, suddenly needing to sit down, settling for the foot of Steve’s bed. You sit and try to control you breathing. “I don’t want to do anything until you want to and you’re ready to. And you said that you want to go slow, and I respect and agree with that, but just now I just totally did  _ not  _ respect it, and-”

The mattress dips as Steve takes a seat next to you. “If I didn’t want you, I would have stopped you,” he says, sounding way more coherent than you do. “I’ve done that before, remember?”

Right, the disastrous first kiss.

You bury your face in your hands. “Do  _ not  _ bring that up right now.”

Steve continues. “I did say that I want things to be slow. But it’s safe to say that today, the…  _ mood _ was right. It’s been some time, and, uh, the way you’re making me _ feel…” _

Hesitantly, you look over at him. He’s biting his lip, and has made no efforts to fix himself, to rearrange his hair or smoothen out the wrinkles in his shirt. 

He’s staring at the ceiling.

“How am I making you feel, Steven?” You ask, aiming for a joke, even though your voice is all off and you don’t find any of this funny.

Steve looks at you, and you can hear his breath hitch.

“What was the word you used that one time?” He says, slowly drawing out each word and slowly drawing out the last of your doubts. “Wait, I remember. _ Crazy. _ I feel  _ crazy.  _ The way you were going for it... I didn’t know you had such a  _ wild  _ side.”

You shake your head. “I didn’t know about that either.”

“Really?”

“You’re the only person that’s ever- that I’ve ever done that to.”

Steve looks too pleased at that, in a suggestive type of way. He smiles, and you wonder if Captain America is a bit of a freak, too. You slide closer to him, and he looks down at you, down at your mouth, and just like that, with his verbal assurance fresh in your mind, you’re ready to be wild again. 

You're already leaning into him, eyes fluttering shut.

“Wait.”

You open your eyes, face paused only a few inches away from him.

“Can I…”

He hasn’t touched the female body since, like, 1940, but he does  _ not  _ let it show. 

Steve puts his hands on your waist again. It’s electric, and you’re getting dizzy, when he drags them _ lower,  _ slipping underneath your shirt. He’s touching your  _ bare skin, _ and that’s a revelation in of itself, and then he slides his hands up, rucking your shirt up with it. Not all the way up, but he goes from your waist to holding your hips, to slowly rising higher and higher.

You’re dead. There is no way you can feel this good and needy while still being alike.

“Is this okay?”

Steve’s voice is dark, _ sultry, _ grating over every sensitive part of you. 

_ “Yes,” _ you gasp.

Before he can respond, with his eyes half-lidded and face flushed, the red trailing all the way down to the blooming purple on his neck, you swing a leg over him and slide up into his lap.

The look on his face is priceless- pure, utter  _ shock,  _ and then morphing into something else. He looks drunk off you, and ecstatic. 

“Is  _ this  _ okay?” You ask, curling a hand around the back of his neck, dipping close and pressing your forehead against his.

_ “Yes.” _

***

Steve is waiting outside for you when you get off of work. You head over to him, ready to tell him a dumb joke or just flounce around until he kisses you, when someone behind you calls out your name.

You turn around to find a skinny man walking towards you, wearing khakis and wire-rimmed glasses.

It’s Winnie’s son. The store’s owner, technically your boss, who always asks you to call him David, even though you never call him that in your head. It’s been over a month since you last saw him, he rarely comes by during your shift. He doesn’t like books very much, but he’s a nice guy, always genuine and committed to getting to know his employees.

“Hi David,” you say, smiling as he joins you and Steve outside the storefront. 

“How’s it going?” He asks, and you have no problem telling him that you’re doing _ great. _

You talk with him for a few minutes, about the classes you’re taking and how his kids are doing and the author he wants to bring in for a book signing event later next month. Steve stays beside you, patiently waiting. When the conversation lulls, David turns to him, expecting an introduction. He clearly picks up on how close you two stand together.

You suddenly panic. What do you say

“This is Steve,” you say, and then wonder if you were supposed to introduce him under some pseudonym, if David has any idea who he’s standing across from. “He’s, uh…”

David shakes Steve’s hand while you struggle

“I’m her boyfriend,” Steve supplies, and the surprise must be clearly written all over your face, because David laughs.

“Boyfriend? Wow, nice to meet you!”

He’s overly enthusiastic. Steve is overly polite. You think you might faint.  _ Boyfriend… _

“It’s nice to meet you too,” Steve says. He looks over at you and  _ winks.  _ You pretend he does it out of relief, because he hasn’t been recognized yet.

David grins. “I’ll leave you to it. Have a good night!”

He disappears into the bookstore and leaves you outside with Steve.

You stare at him like you’ve never seen before. Labels have been the very  _ last  _ thing on your mind, a concept too insignificant to even consider. Steve has so many other problems, much more consequential things to worry about than what his title is. But apparently he’s already thought about it, what with how casually he put it out there, that he’s your fucking _ boyfriend. _

Really, you shouldn’t be that surprised about it. After the night in his room, this should only be natural, right?

You’re still surprised about it.

And  _ elated. _

Steve reaches out and takes your hands, pressing his palms over yours. The sun has already set, but the glow from the bookstore and the rest of the street let you see him clearly, in soft light.

Already, he’s second-guessing himself. His brow is furrowed as he brings your joined hands up, a gesture you think is meant to be lighthearted.

You dive right into it.

“So, you’re my boyfriend?”

His shoulders straighten, taut and angled away from you. Tense. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It just slipped out. I mean, I  _ hope  _ I am, especially after everything. But-”

You pull your hand from his grasp and do what you’ve been aching to do for months. You put your hand on the side of his face, fingers trailing into his beard, palm hovering over his eye, thumb pressed right into the crease between his eyebrows, smoothing it out. He hesitates, and then completely gives into your touch, relaxing back into you.

After a minute, you pull your hand from his grasp and use it to cup the other side of his face. You move your thumb away and bring back your palm, so he can see you looking at him. He sighs, softly, and your heart swells. There’s other people all around, but you pay it no mind.

You tilt your head up and kiss him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow thank you all for reading!   
> it started at the bookstore so i thought it should end at the bookstore! maybe later i'll come back and add a few stand-alone one-shots of steve and reader's life together but right now i want to write some more fics! thank you all for joining me along for the ride :)  
> i seriously would have dropped this fic at chapter 2 without yall's continued support. any time someone comments my motivation just goes UP. to everyone that's commented or left kudos or bookmarked this fic, thank you!!!!! shoutout to my queens stacey and stargazingfangirl18 for commenting since day 1 of chapter 1... and commenting on every chapter since... i love and adore you!!! again, thank you all sosososososo much for reading :)


End file.
